What is ethics?
1) Ethincs is a moral principle that govern a person's or group's behavior.
2) The moral correctness of specific conduct.
There is no other areas in medicine that is as fraught/difficult as in family planning/reproductive health services, since it will be exposed the medical person or service providers in personal conflict due to norms/values that has been possessed by them.
Reproductive health services include a range of services such as: family planning and contraceptives maternal health including care during prenatal, labour and post-natal sexual transmitted infections HIV & AIDS unwanted pregnancies abortion etc. As we can see there are so many sensitive issues around the above services.
As professional, it is expected that in providing services, doctors, midwives, nurses and other health workers should demonstrate respect, non-judgmental attitides, caring toward clients. But the personal values and norms sometimes can be inhibitory factors in achieving these above expectation.
Understanding and believing human rights, client's rights and learn how to do good counseling including making sure that informed choice is made by client, should be tought as early as possible to medical students before they are deeply influenced by rigid norms and values which doesn't promotes human rights.
