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25 Med. & L. 513 (2006)
Ethical Misconduct by Abuse of Conscientious Objection Laws

handle is hein.journals/mlv25 and id is 531 raw text is: Med Law (2006) 25:513-522 Medicine and Law CYOZMOT 2006 Bioethics ETHICAL MISCONDUCT BY ABUSE OF CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION LAWS 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. Keywords: Conscientious objection; ethics; ethical misconduct; duty to refer; civil disobedience; professional ethics INTRODUCTION Many national laws, including those of constitutional status, reinforced by leading international human rights treaties and declarations, protect freedom of religious belief and conscience. Some go further to protect rights of conscience not founded on religious beliefs, but on, for instance, philosophical * Ph.D., LL.D. Professor Emeritus of Health Law and Policy, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 513