Citations of:
Add citations
You must login to add citations.
|
|
Conscientious Objection has become a highly contested topic in the bioethics literature and public policy. However, when CO is discussed, it is almost universally referred to as a single entity. Reality reveals a more nuanced picture. Healthcare professionals may object to a given action on numerous grounds. They may oppose an action because of its ends, its means, or because of factors that lay outside of both ends and means. Our paper develops a taxonomy of CO, which makes it possible (...) |
|
In complex, pluralistic societies, different views concerning the moral duties of healthcare professionals inevitably exist: according to some accounts, doctors can and should cooperate in performing abortion or physician-assisted suicide, while according to others they should always defend human life and protect their patients’ health. It is argued that the very plurality of responses presently given to questions such as these provides a liberal argument in favour of conscientious objection, as an attempt to deal with moral diversity by protecting both (...) |
|
“It's almost like putting salt in a wound, for this person who's already made a very difficult decision,” suggested Meghan Patterson, a licensed obstetrician-gynecologist whom we interviewed in our qualitative study of the experiences of North Carolina abortion providers practicing under the state's Woman's Right to Know Act. The act requires that women receive counseling with state-mandated information at least twenty-four hours prior to obtaining an abortion. After the law was passed, Patterson worked with clinic administrators, in consultation with a (...) |
|
Certain health care services and goods, although legal and often generally accepted in a society, are by some considered morally problematic. Debates on conscientious objection in health care try to resolve whether and when physicians, nurses and pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to provide medical services and goods because of their ethical or religious beliefs. These debates have most often focused on issues such as how to balance the interests of patients and health care professionals, and the compatibility of (...) |
|
This article attempts to motivate a reorientation of ethical analysis of conscientious objection by physicians. First, it presents an illustrative case from a hospital emergency department for context. Then, it criticizes the standard pro- and anti-CO arguments. It proposes that the fault in standard approaches is to focus on the ethics of the physician’s behavior, and a better way forward on this issue is to ask how the party against whom the physician exercises the CO ought to respond. It connects (...) |
|
Many contributors to debates about professional conscience assume a basic, pre-professional right of conscientious refusal and proceed to address how to ‘balance’ this right against other goods. Here I argue that opponents of a right of conscientious refusal concede too much in assuming such a right, overlooking that the professions in which conscientious refusal is invoked nearly always operate as public cartels, enjoying various economic benefits, including protection from competition, made possible by governments exercising powers of coercion, regulation, and taxation. (...) |
|
BackgroundThe public’s attitudes to conscientious objection are likely to influence political decisions about CO and trust towards healthcare systems and providers. Few studies examine the pub... |
|
This article attempts to motivate a reorientation of ethical analysis of conscientious objection by physicians. First, it presents an illustrative case from a hospital emergency department for context. Then, it criticizes the standard pro- and anti-CO arguments. It proposes that the fault in standard approaches is to focus on the ethics of the physician’s behavior, and a better way forward on this issue is to ask how the party against whom the physician exercises the CO ought to respond. It connects (...) |
|
In this article, we offer a rebuttal to a key thesis in Chapter 5 of Engelhardt’s After God: namely, that there exists an “unbridgeable gap” between the dominant secular culture and traditional religious believers. Contra Engelhardt, we argue that it is possible to bridge the gap by employing a strategy that includes, but is not limited to, methods for cultivating understanding and respect and a sense of solidarity. Our argument proceeds in three steps. First, we elucidate Engelhardt’s thesis in light (...) |
|
In the debate on conscientious objection in healthcare, proponents of conscience rights often point to the imperative to protect the health professional’s moral integrity. Their opponents hold that the moral integrity argument alone can at most justify accommodation of conscientious objectors as a “moral courtesy”, as the argument is insufficient to establish a general moral right to accommodation, let alone a legal right. This text draws on political philosophy in order to argue for a legal right to accommodation. The moral (...) |
|
This article attempts to motivate a reorientation of ethical analysis of conscientious objection by physicians. First, it presents an illustrative case from a hospital emergency department for context. Then, it criticizes the standard pro- and anti-CO arguments. It proposes that the fault in standard approaches is to focus on the ethics of the physician’s behavior, and a better way forward on this issue is to ask how the party against whom the physician exercises the CO ought to respond. It connects (...) |
|
In 2019, several US states passed “heartbeat” bills. Should such bills go into effect, they would outlaw abortion once an embryonic heartbeat can be detected, thereby severely limiting an individual’s access to abortion. Many states allow health care professionals to refuse to provide an abortion for reasons of conscience. Yet heartbeat bills do not include a positive conscience clause that would allow health care professionals to provide an abortion for reasons of conscience. I argue that this asymmetry is unjustified. The (...) |
|
Conflict of interests in medicine are typically taken to be financial in nature: it is often assumed that a COI occurs when a healthcare practitioner’s financial interest conflicts with patients’ interests, public health interests, or professional obligations more generally. Even when non-financial COIs are acknowledged, ethical concerns are almost exclusively reserved for financial COIs. However, the notion of “interests” cannot be reduced to its financial component. Individuals in general, and medical professionals in particular, have different types of interests, many of (...) |
|
In this response paper, we respond to the criticisms that Michal Pruski raised against our article “Beyond Money: Conscientious Objection in Medicine as a Conflict of Interests.” We defend our original position against conscientious objection in healthcare by suggesting that the analogies Pruski uses to criticize our paper miss the relevant point and that some of the analogies he uses and the implications he draws are misplaced. |
|
Answers to the questions of what justifies conscientious objection in medicine in general and which specific objections should be respected have proven to be elusive. In this paper, I develop a new framework for conscientious objection in medicine that is based on the idea that conscience can express true moral claims. I draw on one of the historical roots, found in Adam Smith’s impartial spectator account, of the idea that an agent’s conscience can determine the correct moral norms, even if (...) |
|
Ancell and Sinnott-Armstrong argue that medical providers possess wide freedoms to determine the scope of their practice, and therefore, prohibiting almost any conscientious objections is a bad idea. They maintain that we could create an acceptable system on the whole which even grants accommodations to discriminatory refusals by healthcare professionals. Their argument is premised upon applying a free market mechanism to conscientious objections in medicine, yet I argue their Market View possesses a number of absurd and troubling implications. Furthermore, I (...) |
|
|
|
|
|
This paper argues that healthcare aims at the good of health, that this pursuit of the good necessitates conscience, and that conscience is required in every practical judgement, including clinical... |
|
Is conscientious objection necessarily incompatible with the role and duties of a healthcare professional? An influential minority of writers on the subject think that it is. Here, we outline... |
|
I will argue that physicians have an ethical obligation to justify their conscientious objection and the most reliable interpretation of the Polish legal framework claims that conscientious objection is permissible only when the justification shows the genuineness of the judgment of conscience that is not based on false beliefs and arises from a moral norm that has a high rank. I will demonstrate that the dogma accepted in the Polish doctrine that the reasons that lie behind conscientious objection in medicine (...) |
|
|