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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


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