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.

The most controversial component of the ACA has arguably been the mandate that group health plans cover contraception costs, which has elicited backlash from religious and conservative groups who believe it violates certain employers' religious freedoms.

Should hospitals allow medical students, physicians, and staff to wear buttons about political issues on their uniforms?

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.

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.

If employees of religious institutions whose consciences conflict with those of their employers were to be granted legal protection for positive claims of conscience, the religious freedom of institutions within which they work would be gravely compromised.

The Department of Health and Human Service's decision to include a religious exemption to its requirement that private health plans cover contraception without patient cost-sharing raises questions about whether such an exemption appropriately balances the needs, beliefs, rights, and obligations of all affected.

The development of a reversible male hormonal contraceptive would offer a monumental improvement in reproductive choices for both men and women.

In the past, forced sterilizations violated the autonomy of vulnerable women. Today, measures intended to protect such women from the abuses of the past may in fact hamper their autonomy in a different way.

A more just sharing of the responsibility for contraception can only be achieved through the development of male birth control methods and reconceptualizing responsibility for contraception as shared between men and women.