Professor Katie Watson joins Ethics Talk to discuss what clinicians need to know about changes to the post-June 2022 legal, ethical, and clinical landscape of abortion care in the US.
Clinicians in Catholic health care institutions cannot prescribe contraceptives for pregnancy prevention under a false diagnosis without committing fraud and contravening doctrine. Referrals are one option the authors consider for navigating patient requests for contraception.
AMA J Ethics. 2018;20(7):E630-636. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2018.630.
A substantial proportion of patients seen by physicians have had an abortion or will have one in the future, yet acquiring the necessary skills to care for 30 percent of the female patient population has been made challenging for future physicians by a number of laws and amendments.
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.
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.