Conscience Clause (medical) - Informed Consent

Informed Consent

An informed consent clause, although allowing medical professionals not to perform procedures against their conscience, does not allow professionals to give fraudulent information to deter a patient from obtaining such a procedure (such as lying about the risks involved in an abortion to deter one from obtaining one) in order to impose one's belief using deception. These principles were reaffirmed in the Utah Supreme Court's decision in Wood v. University of Utah Medical Center (2002). Commenting on the case, bioethicist Jacob Appel of New York University wrote that "if only a small number of physicians intentionally or negligently withhold information from their patients significant damage is done to the medical profession as a whole" because "pregnant women will no longer know whether to trust their doctors."

Read more about this topic:  Conscience Clause (medical)

Famous quotes containing the words informed and/or consent:

    Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well- informed mind, is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing any thing, should conceal it as well as she can.
    Jane Austen (1775–1817)

    We have been here over forty years, a longer period than the children of Israel wandered through the wilderness, coming to this Capitol pleading for this recognition of the principle that the Government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. Mr. Chairman, we ask that you report our resolution favorably if you can but unfavorably if you must; that you report one way or the other, so that the Senate may have the chance to consider it.
    Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)