As high-tech care decisions led to value clashes in hospital corridors, ethics committees developed to respond to diverse viewpoints, families’ concerns, and clinicians’ moral distress. They now exist in almost all US health care organizations.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(5):546-553. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.5.mhst1-1605.
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.
The social institutions of medicine and the state have a complex history of interaction in which doctors have been the originators of political ideals, goals, and social change but equally often have found themselves to be instruments of political authority.
The FDA’s approval for over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception marked a departure from its standard approval process and obstructed access to a safe and effective drug. That departure could set a dangerous precedent for future decisions.
Fifty-seven percent of women in a recent large study did not want to view their ultrasounds before their abortions, suggesting that mandated viewing interferes with uncoerced consent to care, a hallmark of medical ethics.