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.
Physicians may and should make recommendations to women for maintaining a healthy pregnancy, but until the time a baby is born, the pregnant woman alone should have the last word in deciding what happens to her fetus.
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.
Amanda Fakih, MHSA and Kayte Spector-Bagdady, JD, MBE
Testing everyone for everything identifies more fetal conditions, but confusion persists about whether clinicians should leave screening decisions to patients.
AMA J Ethics. 2019;21(10):E858-864. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2019.858.