Making decisions about fertility--three facts GPs need to communicate to women.

Background: Average annual fertility rates in industrialised countries have been below two children per woman for the past 3 decades. The reasons behind women's childbearing behaviour are complex. However, a lack of awareness regarding the consequences of delayed childbearing and the inability of reproductive technologies to overcome the 'biological clock' may be contributory factors.

Understanding and responding to anti-choice women-centred strategies.

This paper discusses the rise and use of a "woman-centred" anti-choice strategy to oppose abortion in Australia and the USA. It argues that this strategy seeks to imitate and exploit aspects of the pro-choice, women-centred position on abortion. The strategy contends that women do not really choose abortion but are pressured into it by others and then experience a range of negative effects afterwards, including an increased risk of breast cancer, infertility and post-abortion grief.

Regulation, consultation and divergent community views: the case of access to ART by lesbian and single women.

In the many countries which have some form of regulation of ART, a public consultation of some sort is a frequent feature of either the process leading up to regulation or of the regulatory mechanism itself. Not surprisingly, widely divergent views on the moral and political acceptability of ART are expressed during such consultations. And while such diversity of opinion is to be expected, and some even argue welcomed, in pluralist liberal democratic societies, it is often unclear how these divergent community views are and ought to be fed into the opinion-forming and decision-making processes of governments or the bodies that advise them.

Partial and impartial ethical reasoning in health care professionals.

Objectives: To determine the relationship between ethical reasoning and gender and occupation among a group of male and female nurses and doctors.

Design: Partialist and impartialist forms of ethical reasoning were defined and singled out as being central to the difference between what is known as the "care" moral orientation (Gilligan) and the "justice" orientation (Kohlberg). A structured questionnaire based on four hypothetical moral dilemmas involving combinations of (health care) professional, non-professional, life-threatening and non-life-threatening situations, was piloted and then mailed to a randomly selected sample of doctors and nurses.

Women, ectogenesis and ethical theory.

The nature of two influential theories on the moral status of abortion logically commits them to welcoming the advent of ectogenesis (the gestation of human beings outside the womb) as a solution to the abortion conflict. However, qualitative research into women's response to ectogenesis reveals that both women in favour and women opposed to abortion rights reject the technology on surprisingly similar grounds. The abortion framework which led women to reject ectogenesis as an ethical resolution to unwanted pregnancy is contrasted with the moral framework which shapes formal ethical discussions of abortion.

Consequences for patients of health care professionals' conscientious actions: the ban on abortions in South Australia.

The legitimacy of the refusal of South Australian nurses to care for second trimester abortion patients on grounds of conscience is examined as a test case for a theory of permissible limits on the autonomy of health care professionals. In cases of health care professional (HCP) conscientious refusal, it is argued that a balance be struck between the HCPs' claims to autonomous action and the consequences to them of having their autonomous action restricted, and the entitlement of patients to care and the consequences for them of being refused such care. Conscientious action that results in the disruption or termination of health care services, however, is always impermissible on two grounds.