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The 2021 Jellema Lecture: Caring for the Sick and Caring for One's Soul: Conscientious Objection and Medicine


The Jellema Lecture Series is pleased to present Dr. Ruth Groenhout, PhD. of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, the for 2021 lecture.

Lecture Abstract:

Freedom of conscience has been protected for a long time in medicine, but in recent years it has moved in a new direction. Traditionally it protects the right of medical professionals to refuse to perform certain types of procedures, but in several new cases it focuses on groups of people with whom the care-giver disagrees about sexuality. It leads to refusal of all medical care, other than emergency treatment, to people and their children due to those people’s beliefs. Religious freedom should function in this context, but in what ways? And what standards should govern the behavior of medical professionals dealing with patients they disagree with? These are questions where the Reformed tradition offers careful and important thought.

About the Lecturer:

Ruth Groenhout is the Distinguished Professor of Healthcare Ethics at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Dr. Groenhout's primary research and teaching areas are healthcare ethics focusing on gender, health systems and organizations, and health policy. Her most recent book is Care Ethics and Social Structures in Medicine, published in 2018. Other books include Connected Lives: Human Nature and an Ethics of Care, Bioethics: A Reformed Look at Life and Death Choices, and Philosophy, Feminism, and Faith. Groenhout taught philosophy, specializing in healthcare ethics and philosophy of gender, at Calvin from 1996 until she accepted the Distinguished Professor position at UNC Charlotte in 2017. 

This event will also be livestreamed. You can watch the livestream here

Dessert reception to follow in the chapel undercroft.

October 2021
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

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