A growing number of states is enacting laws to protect the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to perform certain services that are morally opposed to.
A summary of the legal cases that have set precedence for the rights of physicians and surrogates when life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn from patients who cannot make the final decision for themselves.
When patient autonomy became a closely held value in medical ethics in the 1960s and '70s, the physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to deliver a given service began to be contested.
Physicians are obligated in many jurisdictions to perform life-sustaining treatments on premature infants with serious developmental or physical impairments, even if it goes against the parents' wishes.