Tag: dignity

Conscientious objection must be respectful, pope tells health care workers

Crux

Junno Arocho Esteves

ROME – When doctors, nurses and health care workers conscientiously object to a procedure to protect the life and dignity of their patients, they must do so respectfully, Pope Francis said.

Without respect, conscientious objection can be “a reason for contempt or pride” that would impede dialogue “with those who hold different positions” and mask the true reason of that objection, which is to the seek the patient’s well-being, the pope told a group of Catholic health care workers May 17 at the Vatican. . . [Full text]

Tongue splitting, bodily harm, and human dignity

BioEdge

Xavier Symons

Contemporary cosmetic surgery has become a tool for realising bizarre personal fantasies. Sometimes it also leads to significant bodily harm. “Tongue-splitting” is an operation whereby a person’s tongue is split from the tip to as far back as the underside base. The operation has become a common alteration for body-modification enthusiasts, who say it heightens their sense of taste and touch.

Some jurisdictions, however, have enacted a ban on the procedure. The operation can be painful, and can temporarily impede one’s capacity for speech.

In a recent post on the blog Practical Ethics, UK lawyer Charles Foster considers the legality and ethics of the procedure.

Foster discusses the case of R v BM, where a Wolverhampton tattooist was found guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm on a patient after splitting their tongue. Even though the customer consented, the court found that consent was not a defence against having inflicted grievous bodily harm.

Foster argues that the ruling represents a defence of basic human dignity, which transcends the ambit of personal autonomy:

[The ruling] is a salutary reminder that there are limits to the law’s protection of personal autonomy. Factors other than autonomy are in play in the criminal law. I have argued elsewhere that the primary factor (and the foundational factor in the criminal law – in which all other factors, including autonomy, are rooted) is human dignity.

Indeed, Foster argues that in harming another, one does violence to one’s own human dignity:

One might say that X causing injury to Y is doubly culpable because in doing so X outrages not only Y’s dignity but also his own (X’s) dignity…dignity is ‘Janus-faced’.

Tongue splitting, bodily harm, and human dignityThis article is published by Xavier Symons and BioEdge under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation to BioEdge. Commercial media must contact BioEdge for permission and fees.