Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
Reports from South Africa indicate that there is considerable controversy surrounding the operation of abortion facilities. It is said that some medical personnel are being forced to participate in abortions despite conscientious objection, while some medical personnel willingly involved in abortions have been subjected to harassment.
Canada
Pharmacists are said to be the most trusted professionals in medicine; they’re conscientious; we rely on their discretion and their judgment; they have our confidence; we respect them; but do pharmacists respect themselves, let alone one another?
It’s a good question, because in Canada, pharmacists, unlike doctors, find that conscientious objection is a bitter pill for their professional licensing organizations to swallow.
The pharmacists’ governors pay lip service to a pharmacist’s right to refuse to dispense products, but, in fact, a customer’s convenience trumps a pharmacist’s freedoms of conscience and religion: pharmacists are free to object but in the end they must refer or otherwise help customers get the objectionable product. [Full text]
The Canadian Medical Association Journal announced that 500 pharmacists in British Columbia would be dispensing the ‘morning after pill’ without a prescription. A bulletin from the College of Pharmacists of B.C. (March-April 2000) stated that pharmacists with conscientious objections to dispensing the drug would be required to refer patients, or dispense the drug themselves if that was not possible. The bulletin also noted that future pharmacy services might expand to include drugs for suicide, cloning, genetic manipulation or execution.
Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
United States House of Representatives
27 June, 2001)
Wang Guoql was a doctor at a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Hospital who
willingly participated in organ harvesting from executed prisoners. However,
after a particularly gruesome experience he experienced a conflict of conscience
and tried to avoid further involvement in the process. His initial attempt was
rejected and he was met with various forms of pressure to continue his
participation. He eventually left China and appeared before a subcommittee of
the US House of Representatives, where he provided the following testimony. [Full text]
INTRODUCTION The practice of discriminating between applicants for posts within obstetrics and gynaecology on the basis of their beliefs about the status of the embryo is becoming increasingly common. This affects not only the individual discriminated against, but also medicine and society as a whole. When this discrimination is faced because of a desire to please the God of the Bible it is more accurately described as persecution (Matthew 5:10-12).
EFFECTS ON THE INDIVIDUAL The effects of this persecution on the individual may be vocational, social, financial, emotional or spiritual. These include influencing ultimate choice of career, rejection by colleagues, unemployment in extreme cases, disappointment, disillusionment and temptation towards compromise. The only positives may be the maintenance of personal integrity and promise of heavenly reward.
EFFECTS ON MEDICINE & SOCIETY Excluding all those who refuse to end a human life simply because its existence happens to be inconvenient to another does medicine a disservice. It is antithetical to historical medicine which calls for self-sacrifice on the part of the doctor in order to preserve the patient according to an established ethical code. It seems that contemporary medicine only wants doctors who follow the status quo by changing their ethical framework to suit the wishes of their patients. The logical outcome of this kind of thinking is that autonomy may be considered to be of greater value than human life in a variety of clinical situations. But medical practice will become unethical if doctors are expected to give treatment which they consider to be inappropriate, such as killing an unborn child. The practice of medicine is in danger of becoming a commodity marketed with the expedient business ethic of supply on demand, where the value of human life can fluctuate as a relative integer. Denying employment to those who seek to preserve life instead of destroying it is a logical step of pragmatism in a culture where abortion is on demand. But medicine should not be a business designed to supply every demand indiscriminately when the demand may not be in the patient’s best interests. If medicine evolves by defining good practice simply as what the patient wants then society will ultimately become a victim of its own unethical requests (cf. Romans 1:28-32).
CONCLUSION Discrimination against those who refuse to include ending human life as part of their job description is becoming increasingly common. However, this serves neither doctors nor patients and is a symptom of a relativistic view of medical ethics. Its detrimental effects are far-reaching, affecting individuals, the medical profession and society in general. Those who see the dangers in this trend have a duty to protect society, the future of medicine, their colleagues and themselves from wrongly redefining beneficence and non-maleficence. [Full text]