What are the ethical considerations of this issue? The ethical considerations of this issue are providing an emergency contraception and the access to emergency contraceptive to the victim of sexual assault such as the oral synthetic hormone or Plan B, the common type of emergency contraception known as morning after pill.
What are the legal considerations of this issue? As legal considerations, the emergency contraception is accepted medically as a way of pregnancy prevention, and not a way of any act of abortion. The access to an emergency contraception for incest, rape, and the domestic victims, is necessary, and the victims of sexual assault have the access the best treatment available. In providing the accurate information without any bias and the preference to prevent an intended pregnancy are important for the victims of sexual assault. What ethical concepts or principles apply to this issue? Debatably, the access to emergency contraception is an issue; a balance between protecting health care religious providers and the moral beliefs, and providing the uniform standards of care and maintaining the rights of the patient is a necessity. The principle constituted a significant approach in terms of analysis of some questions, ethically, and the obligation to the preservation of human life and its limit, in general. In addition, the principle and one of the queries, it addressed the forgoing treatment of sustaining life constituted a physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia, and guided surrogate decision makers or the individuals in the benefits and burdens weighed, accordingly. If you were a judge of the case, would you agree with the decisions of the other judges? How would you justify it to the hospital or the rape victims?
Yes, I would agree. The contraceptives measures operated to the prevention of implantation, equated to abortions in the Catholic moral theology, and impermissible under the Directives of Ethics and Religion. However, the moral distinction was not accepted by the court as relevant in the ruling of the case. In addition, the court stated that, the Catholic Hospital has the responsibility to provide the information that concerned and accessed the rape victim’s estrogen prophylaxis.
Reference
Ascension Health. (2007). Brownfield v. Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital. Retrieved from
http://www.ascensionhealth.org/ethics/public/cases/cases_AF.asp .
Justia US Law. (1989). Brownfield v. Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital: 208 Cal. App. 3d 405
(256 Cal. Rptr. 240). Retrieved from http://law.justia.com/cases/california/calapp3d/208/405.html.
