Professor Katie Watson joins Ethics Talk to consider key questions about clinical and legal risk management for clinicians trying keep patients safe and for patients with complex pregnancies trying to stay alive.
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.
This narrative information graphic contextualizes the lack of current maternal morbidity and mortality data in the United States since the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022.
AMA J Ethics. 2024;26(1):E92-93. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2024.92.
Refusal of pediatric euthanasia can be considered iatrogenic insofar as it inadvertently prolongs patient suffering, but attitudes differ cross-culturally.
AMA J Ethics. 2017;19(8):802-814. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.8.msoc1-1708.
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.
Despite the natural desire in obstetrics for a happy outcome, sometimes the common aggressive interventions will not help maintain a pregnancy until viability.
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.
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.