Joel T. Wu, JD, MPH, MA and Jennifer B. McCormick, PhD, MPP
False health-related speech can cause harm, but it’s not restricted unless it’s obscene. Physicians are obliged not only to correct patients’ false beliefs, but to engage digital spaces in which false claims thrive.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(11):E1052-1058. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.1052.
Government can regulate false speech and professional speech, which bans “gag laws” and compelled speech about laws to restrict abortion, for example. How should health professions share regulatory responsibility with government to prevent true speech about health information from being stifled?
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(11):E1041-1048. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.1041.
Professor Katie Watson joins Ethics Talk to discuss what clinicians need to know about changes to the post-June 2022 legal, ethical, and clinical landscape of abortion care in the US.
Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin joins Ethics Talk to consider how members of different US Supreme Courts have interpreted the US Constitution in ways that have supported or undermined liberty in surprising ways.
Professor Katie Watson joins Ethics Talk to consider key questions about clinical and legal risk management for clinicians trying keep patients safe and for patients with complex pregnancies trying to stay alive.
State laws prohibiting sodomy were on the books throughout US history until struck down by the US Supreme Court, which argued in Lawrence v Texas (2003) that the state cannot criminalize private sexual conduct.
If employees of religious institutions whose consciences conflict with those of their employers were to be granted legal protection for positive claims of conscience, the religious freedom of institutions within which they work would be gravely compromised.