Category: Ethical Commentary

Personal Opinions and Ideology, Not “Science”

From Conscience and its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism

Robert P. George*

On September 11, 2008, the President’s Council on Bioethics heard testimony by Anne Lyerly, MD, chair of ACOG ‘s Committee on Ethics. Dr. Lyerly appeared in connection with the council’s review of her committee ‘s opinion (No. 385) entitled “Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine.” That opinion proposes that physicians in the field of women’s health be required as a matter of ethical duty to refer patients for abortions and sometimes even to perform abortions themselves .

I found the ACOG Ethics Committee ‘s opinion shocking and,  indeed, frightening. One problem was its lack of regard – bordering on contempt , really – for the sincere claims of conscience of Catholic, Evangelical Protestant , Orthodox Jewish , and other pro-life physicians and health-care workers. . .[Full text]

What role does Conscience play in Medical Ethics?

  • D. Vincent Twomey, SVD* | . . . conscience is assumed to be a purely subjective thing, a personal preference . . .that is fundamentally irrational. . . The sincerity of those who hold a subjective view of conscience is not in doubt. But is it enough? More importantly, what is wrong about that all-pervasive contemporary understanding of conscience? For the rest of this paper, I will concentrate on such a misunderstanding in the hope of clarifying what conscience in fact is. . . Full Text

Discrimination at the doctor’s office

New England Journal of Medicine

Perspective

Holly Fernandez Lynch

Doctors dedicate themselves to helping others. But how selective can they be in deciding whom to help? Recent years have seen some highly publicized examples of doctors who reject patients not because of time constraints or limited expertise but on far more questionable grounds, including the patient’s sexual orientation, parents’ unwillingness to vaccinate (in surveys, as many as 30% of pediatricians say they have asked families to leave their practice for this reason), and most recently, the patient’s weight. [Read more . . .]

Project Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario

Re: Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code

(11 September, 2008)

Ethical misconduct by abuse of conscientious objection laws

Med Law. 2006 Sep;25(3):513-22. PubMed PMID: 17078524

Bernard M. Dickens

Abstract:

This paper addresses laws and practices urged by conservative religious organizations that invoke conscientious objection in order to deny patients access to lawful procedures. Many are reproductive health services, such as contraception, sterilization and abortion, on which women’s health depends. Religious institutions that historically served a mission to provide healthcare are now perverting this commitment in order to deny care. Physicians who followed their calling honourably in a spirit of self-sacrifice are being urged to sacrifice patients’ interests to promote their own, compromising their professional ethics by conflict of interest. The shield tolerant societies allowed to protect religious conscience is abused by religiously-influenced agencies that beat it into a sword to compel patients, particularly women, to comply with religious values they do not share. This is unethical unless accompanied by objectors’ duty of referral to non-objecting practitioners, and  governmental responsibility to ensure supply of and patients’ access to such practitioners. [Full Text]