We are now in an era when everything done in medicine is judged in ethical terms, and this is certainly the case for obstetrics and gynecology, which has had more than its share of morally troubling issues. A partial list might include abortion, birth control, dealing with the sexual problems of dependent minors, in vitro fertilization, surrogate parenting, and treating or not treating the multi-handicapped newborn infant and the list goes on. There are dther important, but less publicized and less dramatic moral issues that we share with all of medicine, such as fidelity to science and objectivity, the teaching and learning and doing of research without exploitation of the patient, and not corrupting patient care under the ever-present threat of a malpractice claim. The judgment of medicine’s ethical performance has been made by outside social critics like Freidson’ or Illich2 who label doctors moral entrepreneurs. According to them, we throw our weight around authoritatively and manipulate people with our diagnoses and treatment. Judgments have been made by bioethicists like Gorovitz,’ who thinks: “There is nothing in the training or expertise of the physician which would justify any particular claim to moral authority or even moral insight.” The Hippocratic Oath and Codes of Professional Ethics no longer command much respect. There has arisen the notion that each hospital needs a resident ethicist to tell the doctors and nurses what to do, or to tell them how to think morally about what to do, and every hospital needs an ethics committee to lay down moral laws. Not everyone thinks this makes sense. Caplan,’ while at The Hastings Institute, wrote, and I agree: “It’s naive to think a moral philosopher armed with a moral theory can step into an emergency room or intensive care nursery and immediately dissolve moral conundrums and it’s presumptuous to think that health