Ethics of Sterilization
a recent article in the BMJ talks about ethics of sterilization of young adults.
Of more generalized interest, the article talks about which wishes medical professionals (and presumably other people in a position of power or control) should be more willing to heed:
We might first distinguish between those wishes that are relatively autonomous and those that are less so. And we could plausibly suggest that wishes that are well informed and directed at the long term are more autonomous than those that are badly informed and subject to the seductions of the short term view.
There's lessons in there that i wish other fields would take to heart (software development and business management spring to mind immediately).
More specifically to my situation, it would have been nice if the following advice had been heeded by the first urologist i spoke with:
[Doctors] Must be honest about their philosophical position. If the doctor is opposed to sterilization under any circumstance then this should be explained to the patient and the patient should be referred to another doctor.
It's nice to see the the BMJ (and all their family of journals?) seem to have the full text of their articles available on-line, and the citations are cleanly hyperlinked. Lots of interesting stuff to dig around through.
Yes, this was a really fine a
Yes, this was a really fine article for BMJ to post. And so on target for you!!
The BMJ went free and open access a while back. Sad that more mainstream journals haven't followed suit.
I think it's too bad that the article used a case study of a woman with a medical issue instead of keeping it clean and just saying that she's 26 and doesn't want kids. You know for sure that they would have sterilized her in a heartbeat if she were 26 and poor and had 4 kids aready. No matter that all those kids (and the current partner who doesn't want more) could be killed in a driveby or a car wreck, she could meet new Mr. Wonderful who wants children with her.
Who are we to say that we can or should protect either of these women from regret by not sterilizing them? What about regret about another accidental pregnancy?
The contrast with the response to the educated middle class woman is painful. And I'll bet that if you yourself were black and poor that urologist would have just scheduled you for surgery ASAP!
Do send it to him!!!