Informed consent laws and the constitution: balancing state interests with a physician's first amendment rights and a woman's due process rights.

摘要

Informed consent to medical treatment is both an issue of medical ethics and a legally recognized doctrine of tort law. The early common law doctrine was based on an individual's right to protect her body from unwanted physical intrusion.2 Since the development of an action in tort law, all fifty states have enacted statutes mandating informed consent before a physician provides any medical treatment.