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.
The range of opinions on the extent to which physicians should attend to their patients’ spiritual lives and the arguments that support those opinions.
Frank A. Chervenak, MD and Laurence B. McCullough, PhD
Clinical facts and physicians’ ethical obligations are critical in resolving disagreements between parents and physicians about resuscitation of an extremely premature infant.
A summary of the legal cases that have set precedence for the rights of physicians and surrogates when life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn from patients who cannot make the final decision for themselves.
Physicians need to carefully explain the difficult medical realities of carrying a fetus with severe congenital abnormalities to term but then follow the wishes of a religious family who ask for reasonable medical care.