Ethical Health Care Issues

Ethical Health Care Issues

Ethics offer many things that are issues to whatever subject it is relating to. With health care the ethical concern moves up greatly. There are a great many ethical healthcare issues that currently affect society. The one that is the huge issue is the ability for one to reproduce. Most couples look at this act as a rite of passage in the family world. The only way the human species will continue to be on this planet is by having children. The majority of couples have children by sexual intercourse or the natural way; but for many couples there are troubles with conception. There is another demographic that is addressed with having children. There are same sex couples, and single individuals who may want children but cannot conceive naturally. There are now alternate methods in order to conceive a child and then reproduce.

Artificial insemination is a newer process that many doctors would suggest for those individuals and couples who have trouble conceiving a child. This process would require that a husband, partner, or even donor sperm be placed directly in the mother's reproductive tract. Donor sperm could be used if the partner or the husband's sperm count is too low, or within the cases of same sex or single females trying to have a child they could conceive without any specific partner (Baxamusa, 2011). The doctor that is going to perform this would monitor the soon to be mother's ovulation cycle, and when the best day for insemination is determine semen would be placed directly on the reproductive tract and the waiting period would begin to see if fertilization would occur. There are several different procedure that are used to artificially inseminate a woman; however there are two that are most commonly used. The first most commonly used method is the intrauterine insemination (IUI) method, and the second is the intracervical insemination (ICI) method. The most common and the one that is least expensive is the IUI procedure. This is where sperm is fed directly into the uterus through the use of a catheter. The hopeful mother would then be asked to stay laying down for 15 to 20 minutes, which leads to success to this procedure (Baxamusa, 2011). The other method, ICI, mimics the natural insemination method of sexual intercourse. The ICI method includes a catheter placed at the cervix as sperm is fed and then can swim through the fallopian tubes to the awaiting ovum. The success rate with either of the procedures depends on many factors. The IUI method yields the highest success rate of up to 20% per menstrual cycle. The ICI procedure has a lower success rate of up to 10% per menstrual cycle (Baxamusa, 2011).

Today's society has somewhat of a religious background that makes artificial insemination an ethical issue. Many people within this society believe that sexual reproduction should only take place in a natural way in a marriage bed. This is an issue that would be continued to be debated within the healthcare field for many years. Healthcare professionals need to be objective, and they need to be an advocate for their patients by always keeping in mind the responsibilities they have as being an individual's care giver. There are many different ethical principles that can be an asset for the healthcare providers to have to accomplish this. The principle of beneficence, the