A BBC article on Islam explains that abortion is generally forbidden by the religion, but is acceptable if having the baby will put the mother’s life in danger.

Read an opinion piece by sociologist Florence A. Ruderman from the September 1, 2005 New York Times about a pharmacist who refused to fill her father’s prescription for morphine when he was dying of cancer and in severe pain, and how that’s affected her views of pharmacists’ responsibilities.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes is director of Organs Watch, a human rights documentation center that tracks the ethical and legal uses and sources of transplant organs globally. Scheper-Hughes is also a professor of medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Stephen Streed is director of chaplaincy for Eventide Lutheran Senior Communities, based in Moorhead, Minn. He can talk about the composition of the ethics committee at the home and about issues facing ethics committees in geriatric situations.

David Orentlicher, a physician and lawyer, co-directs the health law program and teaches law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is an expert in bioethics, health law, health-care planning and abortion and previously served as director of the American Medical Association’s Division of Ethics Standards.

Psychology professor Richard L. Wiener lead a research team at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that studied the impact of law on everyday behavior, the implementation of law in the legal system, and the fit between the law and assumptions about human conduct. The team has studied hospital ethics boards’ end-of-life recommendations.

Dr. Ruth M. Farrell is a Cleveland physician with a background in bioethics and philosophy. She is particularly interested in assisted reproductive technologies and treatments for infertility patients. Farrell serves on numerous hospital quality assurance and ethics committees. She founded the obstetrics and gynecology residents’ ethics curriculum at the University Hospital of Cleveland.

Dawn H. Seery is a system ethicist for Mount Carmel Health System in Columbus and serves on the board of trustees for the Bioethics Network of Ohio. Dawn has been involved in hospital ethics committees since the 1980s. Her background includes critical care and palliative care education and management. Her graduate degree is in bioethics and […]

Barbara A. Mulich is a palliative care nurse practitioner at the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center at West Virginia University in Morgantown.