A few landmines are lurking in the field of our state’s educational laws. California Education Code 51931 “definitions” section details that only “medically accurate” information can be taught. Seemingly fair enough. Also, Code 51933 states: “(4) Instruction and materials shall not reflect or promote bias against any person on the basis of any category protected by Section 220.

Dr. Joy Riley raises several ethical questions introduced by the production of “blastoids,” embryo-like structures from stem cells in a recent study.

Compassion & Choices uses every trick in the book to get physician-assisted suicide legalized in individual states, and they never give up. They fund polling with leading questions in the vein of, “Would you like to die in terrible pain hooked up to a machine by doctors who won’t let you die or should physicians aid you in dying?” They then tout the results as overwhelming support for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide to the media and anyone else who will listen.

Dr. Autumn Dawn Galbreath explores what a variety of secular physicians have to say about praying with patients in the exam room. It’s a topic that is vastly important to Christian healthcare professionals. Not surprisingly, there was a wide range of options among secular physicians.

his is the eighth in a series of on conscience in healthcare, by Jonathan Imbody, Vice President for Government Relations for the Christian Medical Association and Director of Freedom2Care. To find more from the series, visit www.cmda.org/thepoint or freedom2care.blogspot.com.

An an article released in the BYU Journal of Public Law, Dr. Christopher Rosik examines the history of sexual orientation change effort/therapy (SOCE) bans and what they reveal about the interplay of professional psychology, political advocacy and cultural change. In this blog post, Dr. Andre Van Mol reviews his findings and how these bans affect healthcare professionals.

In the realm of sexual reproduction, the idea of in vitro fertilization, a technological (and for many an ethical) impossibility years ago, is now commonplace. And, as foreseen in the futuristic movie Gattaca, it may someday become the standard method of reproduction.

This excerpt is the seventh in a series of essays on conscience in healthcare, by Jonathan Imbody, Vice President for Government Relations for the Christian Medical Association and Director of Freedom2Care. To find the series, visit www.cmda.org/thepoint.

There are three bills pending in the California Assembly that beg your attention and action. They clearly seem intended to stand as national models. Dr. Andre Van Mol provides a brief on these bills, followed by talking points regarding their problems and where to lodge your protests.

This excerpt is the sixth in a series of essays on conscience in healthcare, by Jonathan Imbody, Vice President for Government Relations of the Christian Medical Association and Director of Freedom2Care. The essays respond to "Physicians, Not Conscripts — Conscientious Objection in Health Care," Ronit Y. Stahl, Ph.D. and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, New England Journal of Medicine 376;14, April 6, 2017.

by Andre Van Mol, MD A 2016 article in the journal Demography asserted that health outcomes for children raised in either same-sex or different-sex married homes were about the same. Sociologist D.P. Sullins published a 2017 article in the same journal noting inadvertent but crushing mistakes in the measures for the 2016 paper, namely that the data taken from the National Health Interview Survey, administered by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), misclassified 42 percent of the sample’s same-sex married partners as opposite-sex.

The title of the article might lead a reader to believe the authors support a physician’s right of conscience, but they do just the opposite. They strongly assert the will of the patient over the conscience of the physician. They write, “Making the patient paramount means offering and providing accepted medical interventions in accordance with patients’ reasoned decision,” and “Health care professionals who are unwilling to accept these limits [putting aside their own conscience to support patient autonomy] have two choices: select an area of medicine, such as radiology that will not put them in situations that conflict with their personal morality, or if there is no such areas, leave the profession.” While this quote would seem to apply to a broad variety of issues, in the context of the article the authors are referring to abortion.