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.
Some disability advocates take issue with the “normalization” goals of the medical model of rehabilitation, but expressions of that position can be dismissive of rehabilitationists’ efforts to remediate oppressive functional deficits.
AMA J Ethics. 2015;17(6):562-567. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.6.msoc1-1506.
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.