Medical Law and Medical Ethics-Complementary or Corrosive?

Abstract

This article considers the relationship between medical law and medical ethics from a lawyer’s perspective. In the case of Re W, Lord Donaldson opined that whilst the law might allow for female minors to be forced into having abortions against their will, ‘medical ethics’ would prevent this from occurring. The article tests the veracity of this statement. It does so through a fictitious process of inquiry, by a hypothetical medical practitioner, into this imagined ethical dilemma. It finds that, rather than complementing each other in clearly defined roles, medical law and medical ethics actually combine to leave something of a regulatory vacuum, with each abrogating responsibility for decisions to the other, which can only be filled by the personal morality of the individual medical practitioner — precisely what post-Nuremberg medical ethics sought to avoid.