The majority opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health gave the nation a lesson in the history of the relevant caselaw, legal precedent, and common law traditions regarding abortion in the United States. It also presents a master class on the proper examination of cases in the Supreme Court and the meaning, strengths, and weaknesses of the principle of stare decisis. In this article, Blackwell gives readers a summary of this monumental opinion and its depth of information and analysis.

In the highly politicized world of maternal-fetal health care, the lines between risks associated with pregnancy and the presence of active pathologies caused or exacerbated by pregnancy are blurred in the name of reproductive freedom. Rather than treat these risks as something to be aware of during pregnancy, the pro-abortion lobby treats them as reasons to terminate pregnancy regardless how realistic they are. In this article, the author pushes back against the movement to treat potential risks, no matter how remote, as immediate dangers.

Informed consent is an important principle in medicine. It protects patients and their families from being unduly pressured into procedures they do not understand with risks they may not fully appreciate. While organ donor status is near ubiquitous for anyone with a driver’s license or ID card, rarely is this status accepted with fully informed consent. As a result, patients are left vulnerable to tests that may cause them irrevocable harm or even procedures that may cause their death. The test for brain death is an example of the former possibility. This article explores the dangers of this and the apnea test, as well as the lack of informed consent present when organ donor agreements are generally made.

Concierge medicine is a practice where patients pay a membership fee in order to receive more personalized and often higher-than-average quality health care. This is in stark contrast to the more common fee-for-service model most patients receive. In this article, concerns about concierge medicine are raised, focusing mostly on the inequity that can result from what is essentially a two-tiered health care system.

The execution of Kenneth Smith by the state of Alabama using nitrogen hypoxia made headlines earlier this year. The major question was whether the method of execution was appropriate. However, few major news outlets approached the question of whether Smith’s execution was appropriate in itself. In this article, Coleman explores the case itself and the teachings of the Catholic Church regarding capital punishment.

The Dead Donor Rule is an important component of the protections afforded to donors in organ donations. It states that medical professionals must be certain that a patient has truly passed away before procuring their organs for transplantation. One method of assessing this is using the neurological criteria. Patients satisfying these criteria have achieved what is commonly referred to as Brain Death. However, the question of whether brain death is true death is one hotly contested in some areas of Catholic bioethics. Recently, however, new guidelines provided by the American Academy of Neurology have given rise to a new disagreement: whether these new guidelines accurately assess brain death at all. This article gives an introduction to a longer call to action, Catholics United on Brain Death and Organ Donation, which describes the issues with this new guidance and objects to its use.

The modern definition of health care has, regrettably, expanded far beyond what can reasonably be considered care. Abortion, gender reassignment, and physician-assisted suicide damage bodies and end lives, rather than healing patients. In this article, Mundy describes where modern ideas of what passes for health care have gone wrong and how to better understand what it means to practice medicine.

The human conscience is a divine gift but one that is severely misunderstood in modern society. Often seen as an internal voice that guides us, conscience is much deeper and requires honest reflection and a receptivity to truth. In this article, Humphreys discusses both the errors many allow in their conscience development and how to better develop a trustworthy conscience.

The tragic cases of Charlie Gard and, more recently, Indi Gregory in the United Kingdom have brought into question the rights of parents in cases where civil authorities consider prolonged medical intervention to be inappropriate. In both cases, accommodations were offered to the parents by medical systems outside the country, but the government of the United Kingdom refused to release the patients. This article discusses the disagreements over the use of what Catholic thinkers would call ordinary vs. extraordinary means balanced with the rights of parents to make health care decisions for their minor children.

The release of the document Fiducia supplicans from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith in December quickly led to intense discussion over its implications. Some quickly assumed the document allowed certain blessings previously disallowed by the Church while others considered it a clarification of the Theology of Blessings that remained in line with previous teachings. Still others found great confusion in the discordant interpretations. This article aims to clarify the document’s teaching and aid the faithful in its interpretation while discussing how it may be reflected upon by church leaders and laity alike.