ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the framework for clinical judgment and decision-making about the ethical dimensions of clinical practice and research in maternal-fetal medicine. The outcome of this process is that beneficence-based clinical judgments take on a rigor that they sometimes lack in maternal-fetal medicine and the process of their formulation includes explaining them to the patient. The ethical principles of beneficence and respect for autonomy play a complex role in obstetric clinical judgment and practice. Ethics is the disciplined study of morality. Medical ethics is the disciplined study of morality in medicine and concerns the obligations of physicians, health-care organizations to patients as well as the obligations of patients. The ethical principle of beneficence in its general meaning and application requires one to act in a way that is expected reliably to produce the greater balance of benefits over harms in the lives. Beneficence-based clinical judgment has ancient pedigree, with its first expression found in the Hippocratic Oath and accompanying texts.
