Distinguishing between elective and therapeutic abortions undermines the moral agency of patients and disproportionately amplifies moral rather than medical dimensions of the procedure.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(12):E1175-1180. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.1175.
Feminism plays critical roles in innovating health care policies and practices. Feminist insights into clinicians as gatekeepers to gender-transition interventions can help resist tendencies to pathologize transgender.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(11):1132-1138. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.11.msoc1-1611.
Preventing bad outcomes for teens and their offspring was the impetus behind confidential care for reproductive health. Requiring parental involvement created an obstacle to the provision of necessary care.
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.
The revisions balance a growing understanding of gender identity disorders and societal views with the need to retain conditions that benefit from intervention and the removal of which would hamper patients’ ability to receive medical treatment.