Congratulations on completing the Clinical Ethics Module on Beginning of Life

Hopefully this module has enhanced your knowledge to recognize and address clinical ethics issues in the care of patients and families at the beginning of life.

Key review points are:

1. Catholic health care is committed to promoting the human dignity of all persons and protecting human life from its very beginning.
2. Genetic counseling may be provided in order to promote responsible parenthood.
3. Except in cases of emergency, when a patient’s wishes cannot be known, free and informed consent of the person is required prior to any medical treatment or procedure.
4. True informed consent requires that the patient receive all reasonable information about the proposed treatment, its purpose, benefits, risks, side effects, consequences and cost as well as any reasonable and morally legitimate alternatives, including no treatment.
5. In making ethical decisions about treatment options both values of the dignity of the person and just stewardship of resources need to be taken into account.
6. The directly intended termination of pregnancy before viability or the directly intended destruction of a viable fetus is considered a direct abortion and is never permitted.
7. A pregnant woman may avail herself of operations, treatments and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition, when they cannot be safely postponed until the fetus is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.
8. For a proportionate reason, labor may be induced after a fetus is viable.
9. Parents have a duty to use proportionate means of preserving the life of their child, but may refuse or withdraw means that do not offer a reasonable hope of benefit or entail an excessive burden to the child.