Multiple pregnancy is increasingly considered a complication of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and ovarian stimulation for natural fertilization. Harms to fetuses, newborn and older children, mothers, families, and healthcare systems are encouraging single embryo transfer. When patients knowingly...

Recent court decisions, for instance in South Africa and Latin America, have held states bound to respect and serve HIV/AIDS patients' human rights to indicated and available medical care. HIV/AIDS is estimated to affect over 36 million people worldwide, including 16.4 million women of...

The Millennium Development Goals set ambitious targets for women's health, including reductions in maternal and child mortality and combating the spread of HIV/AIDS. The law, which historically has often obstructed women's access to the health care they require, has a dynamic potential to ensure...

Adolescents, defined by WHO as 10 to 19 years old, can give independent consent for reproductive health services if their capacities for understanding have sufficiently evolved. The international Convention on the Rights of the Child, almost universally ratified, limits parental powers, and...

Each year an estimated 515 000 women die of complications of pregnancy and childbirth, 7 million more suffer serious health problems and 50 million suffer adverse health effects. Over 98% of deaths occur in resource-poor countries. However, poverty alone neither justifies nor necessarily...

Physicians both collectively and individually need not be passive in the face of demonstrable evidence of social injustices that cost women their lives, in high proportions and for causes that could be cost-effectively prevented or remedied. Ethical arguments and legal means can be mobilized to...

In 2003, the World Health Organization published its well reference handbook Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems to address the estimated almost 20 million induced abortions each year that are unsafe, imposing a burden of about 67 thousand deaths annually. It is a...

Conflicts of interest arise when those who owe conscientious duties to others appear to have personal interests that might tempt them to subordinate those duties to their self-interest. Conflicts of interest are distinguishable from conflicts of commitment, which arise when individuals bear two...