Qualifying conscience protections for institutions with requirements that they minimize hardship caused to the patient would prevent religious institutions from acting as a choke point on the path to services.
All of us who are pursuing solutions to the obesity epidemic face clinical, ethical, and regulatory challenges. First among them is the significant role of individual lifestyle and behavior choices in causing obesity.
Some question whether plastic surgeons bear responsibility for promoting suspect norms of beauty, given that certain types of cosmetic enhancements reinforce common conceptions of normality that are harmful to society.
With good planning and good will, medical professionals’ right of conscience and patients’ rights to controversial services can be both protected and accommodated.
A physician advocate who has taken public advocacy stances against the federal government while employed by the government talks about the conflicts that arise between medicine and politics.
Lynn P. Freedman, JD, MPH, Rana E. Barar, and Ann M. Drobnik, MPH
Physicians should play a critical role in expanding access to reproductive health choices for women, including the choice to give birth under the care of a midwife.