Intended for healthcare professionals

Analysis And Comment Ethics

Conscientious objection in medicine

BMJ 2006; 332 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.332.7536.294 (Published 02 February 2006) Cite this as: BMJ 2006;332:294
  1. Julian Savulescu, director (julian.savulescu@philosophy.ox.ac.uk)1
  1. 1 Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 1PT

    Deeply held religious beliefs may conflict with some aspects of medical practice. But doctors cannot make moral judgments on behalf of patients

    Shakespeare wrote that “Conscience is but a word cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe” (Richard III V.iv.1.7). Conscience, indeed, can be an excuse for vice or invoked to avoid doing one's duty. When the duty is a true duty, conscientious objection is wrong and immoral. When there is a grave duty, it should be illegal. A doctors' conscience has little place in the delivery of modern medical care. What should be provided to patients is defined by the law and consideration of the just distribution of finite medical resources, which requires a reasonable conception of the patient's good and the patient's informed desires (box). If people are not prepared to offer legally permitted, efficient, and beneficial care to a patient because it conflicts with their values, they should not be doctors. Doctors should not offer partial medical services or partially discharge their obligations to care for their patients.

    Problem of conscientious objection

    Doctors have always given a special place to their own values in the delivery of health care. They have always had greater knowledge of the effects of medical treatment, and this fostered a belief that they should decide which treatments are appropriate for patients— that is, paternalism. Their values crept into clinical decisions.1 2 This has been squarely overturned by greater patient participation in decision making and the importance given to respecting patients' autonomy.3 More recently, doctors' values have reappeared as a right to conscientiously object to offering certain medical services. Examples include, refusal to offer termination of pregnancy, especially late term termination, to women who are legally entitled to it and refusal to provide reproductive advice and help to gay couples, single …

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