Isabelle Freiling, PhD, Nicole M. Krause, MA, and Dietram A. Scheufele, PhD
Misinformation is an urgent new problem, so health professions communities need solutions as much as they need to be wary of ethical pitfalls of rushed interventions.
AMA J Ethics. 2023;25(3):E228-237. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.228.
Restrictions on employer-based health insurance coverage of medical services or treatments, whether motivated by religious prohibitions, political objections, or concerns about cost, degrade quality of care and undermine the patient-clinician relationship.
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.
Julian Savulescu's writing on conscientious objection is guided by an emphasis on the principle of distributive justice that does not allow religion to have a special status as justification.
An argument that the concept of judicious dissent can resolve the debate over a physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to provide lawful services.
An argument that an individual physician’s conscience-based decision not to offer specific, lawful medical services should not restrict patients’ access to those services.
Supporters of reproductive choice believe that women receive inadequate information about prenatal testing—often after some testing has already been done.