Emerging Issues

Because of medical advances and changes in the health industry, new challenges to patients’ rights and access to care are continually emerging. In the 1990s, the biggest threat came from the beginning of consolidation in the hospital industry, leading to the mergers of religious hospitals with historically nonsectarian hospitals and the imposition of religious doctrine at the merged entities. That decade also saw the approval of a dedicated emergency contraception (EC) product, Plan B, which was a significant advance for women’s health, but then produced a backlash by religious conservatives, including pharmacists who are refusing to fill prescriptions for EC.

Since the year 2000, a number of emerging issues are threatening patients’ rights. These include:

• Increased government funding of health care delivery by religiously-affiliated agencies, since the advent of the current federal administration; and
• The rise of an “embryo rights” movement among religious conservatives that is attempting to secure legal personhood and human rights for embryos and even fertilize eggs, with serious implications for reproductive rights and biotechnology.