This is a book for which many concerned either to protect conscientious objection to medical procedures or to ensure patients' access to lawful, non-discriminatory health services have been waiting. Respectful of the interests both of religiously-motivated health service providers and of patients requiring (particularly reproductive) health services, Holly Fernandez Lynch proposes practical means to reconcile the rights of both with minimal compromise. A timely and powerful book.
Bernard Dickens, Professor Emeritus of Health Law and Policy, University of Toronto
Lynch's new book reveals that conscientious refusals in medicine extendfar beyond the archetypal case of abortion. From the hospital bedside,to the home hospice, to the fertility clinic, to the stem cell researchlaboratory, moral objections to the provision of medical services plagueneedy patients and conflicted physicians alike. Lynch brings aninformed legal, moral, and practical approach to the negotiating table,offering a values-based pairing system aimed at widening the comfortzone for all stakeholders. Matchmaking in medicine? It may just be thecure for a vexing systemic ailment.
Judith F. Daar, Professor of Law, Whittier Law School, and Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California Irvine College of Medicine
This book is an original and significant contribution to the highly contentious issue of conscientious objection in medicine. The author proposes and systematically defends a licensing model solution to conflicts of conscience. Readers who disagree with Lynch's conclusions will nevertheless benefit from her comprehensive and incisive analyses and arguments. The book is a must read for anyone with an interest in the subject.
Mark R. Wicclair, Department of Philosophy, West Virginia University, and Center for Bioethics and Health Law, University of Pittsburg
Brilliant...This book is interdisciplinary bioethics as its finest.
Choice
Lynch's pragmatic approach is also innovative and refreshing in a policy arena that is often fraught with an overabundance of criticism with little substance on reform.
Dhrubajyoti Bhattacharya
The Journal of Legal Medicine