Navajo students whose beliefs forbid them from touching dead bodies need not forgo pursuing careers in medicine; some medical school administrators are teaching anatomy without cadavers.
A medical student’s desire to practice the specialty that he or she finds most interesting should not outweigh the right of patients in a pluralistic society to receive a full range of legal medical services.
With good planning and good will, medical professionals’ right of conscience and patients’ rights to controversial services can be both protected and accommodated.
Direct sterilization by means of tubal ligation is morally unacceptable in Catholic bioethics but other procedures that result in indirect sterilization may be acceptable under certain conditions.
Catholic medical school education and the Catholic health care systems in the U.S. emphasize the moral growth of the physician and respect for the body, mind and spirit of patients.
A growing number of states is enacting laws to protect the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to perform certain services that are morally opposed to.