Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
Britain’s National Health Service is denying access to various services provided by the state health care system because of patient lifestyles. Smokers and those who are considered overweight are denied some operations or procedures in about a quarter of the country’s health care regions. Physicians and others are critical of the decisions because they say they are being made for fiscal, not clinical reasons. Health care administrators claim that they are medically justified. [Daily Mail]
Two Catholic midwives who brought suit against National Health Services Greater Glasgow and Clyde have lost the case in the Court of Session. The judge ruled that midwives, while expected to supervise and direct staff providing abortions, were not required to directly participate in the procedure, and were “sufficiently removed” from the procedures that their beliefs had been appropriately accommodated. Nonetheless, the judge did acknowledge that they were causally connected, but ruled that the protection of conscience clause in the Abortion Act (1967) must be interpreted to refer only to direct participation.
NEWS RELEASE
29 February 2012, 17:15
The two Glasgow midwives at the centre of today’s court judgment on conscientious objection to abortion have made the following statement:
Miss Mary Doogan said:
“Connie [Wood] and I are both very disappointed and greatly saddened by today’s verdict.
“For most of our 20-plus years of employment as midwifery sisters at the Southern General Hospital we have been proud to be associated with a maternity unit in which the right of all midwifery staff to freedom of conscience has been acknowledged, protected and upheld with no detrimental outcome to any mother whatsoever.
“Neither Connie nor I stand in judgement of any woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy for whatever reasons. We are more than aware of the difficult choices that some expectant mothers may be faced with in a crisis pregnancy.
“However, in holding to the view that life should be protected from conception to natural death, neither do we wish to be judged for exercising what is our legal right to refuse to participate in the process of medical termination of pregnancy.
“We wish now to take some time to consider all options that are available to us (including appeal) before making any further comment.”
Notes for editors:
Since both women remain employees of the health board they are not in a position to make further comment or give interviews.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has supported the midwives in bringing their case, underwriting their legal costs, and will now be considering their further legal options with them. Please see SPUC’s release of earlier today and of 17 January.SPUC’s communications department can be contacted on:
Trevor Phillips, the chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, has said that religious believers should not be free to adhere to their own tenets when acting in the public domain. “Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law,” he said. He agreed with the court ruling that forced the closure of all Catholic adoption agencies in Britain because they objected to adoption by persons identified as homosexual. [The Telegraph]
Scotland’s largest health board, the National Health Service Greater Glasgow and Clyde, ordered two Catholic midwives to schedule and supervise other health care workers providing abortion. The organization rejected a grievance from the midwives, claiming that the protection of conscience provision in the Abortion Act exempts objectors only from active and direct participation in an abortion. It insists that it can lawfully order objectors to perform other duties necessary for the provision of abortions. The two midwives have gone to the Court of Session in Edinburgh seeking an order overturning the employer’s decision. [BBC; The Telegraph]