Abstract This article focuses on Tasmania’s Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Act 2013, which decriminalises abortion in that State. The article first provides an overview of the Tasmanian legislation, comparing it with Victoria’s Abortion Law Reform Act 2008. It then provides a more in-depth analysis of a doctor’s right to “conscientious objection” and the requirement in both Acts of an “obligation to refer”. The article concludes that ultimately, as a democratic society, it is important that both a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy and a doctor’s right to freedom of conscience is respected. Where these rights conflict, as is the case when a doctor with a conscientious objection to abortion is confronted with a patient who seeks information about abortion, they must be balanced. The Victorian and Tasmanian Acts represent a considered and reasonable approach to balancing the rights at issue.
Extract Professionals have a prima facie obligation to do what their profession requires. This is an uncontroversial principle. Equally uncontroversial is that our conscience is essential to our moral integrity. On any account of conscience (whether religious, philosophical or psychological), conscience encompasses core and self-identifying moral beliefs. Therefore, there is also a prima facie duty to respect conscience. The issue of conscientious objection in healthcare is the issue of whether and how to strike a balance between these two prima facie duties when they conflict with each other, for example, when doctors have a conscientious objection to abortion.
Abstract This Article examines the use by anti-contraception advocates of the claims that “contraception harms women” and “contraception is abortion,” claims made most prominently in litigation challenging Obamacare’s contraceptive coverage requirement. See Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 134 S. Ct. 2751 (2014). The Article uncovers the nineteenth-century roots of these arguments and the strategic reasoning behind their current revival, to reveal that these claims are part of a broad attack on contraception grounded in opposition to non-procreative sex. In Part II, the Article reviews nineteenth-century reasoning about contraceptives, and then in Part III, discusses the modern revival of this Comstock era mode of reasoning about contraception which connected immorality and illness. Today, however, considerable social acceptance of sex for pleasure (at least for some people in some circumstances) means that straightforward arguments against contraception based on its immorality do not resonate as successfully as they once did. Social conservatives have publicly acknowledged as much, expressing an anxiety about the position of religion as “belief” rather than “truth,” and about a rise in what they call “sexualityism.” As a result, modern opponents of contraception have intentionally attempted to mask outmoded and unpopular moral opposition to non-procreative sex by using scientific discourse, citing the best science “we can currently lay our hands on,” for support. The problem for anti-contraception advocates, as revealed in Parts IV and V, is that the appeal to science is a purely rhetorical move, and their claims are contradicted by the latest scientific evidence. The Article establishes the safety and benefits of hormonal contraceptives to women’s and children’s health. The Article also shows that the claim that five hormonal contraceptives are abortifacients is false. Four out of five do not interfere with implantation of a fertilized egg and so cannot be said to terminate a “pregnancy,” even as redefined by opponents as occurring upon fertilization. Opposition to these hormonal contraceptives is thus not truly based on the view that destruction of a fertilized egg is immoral and should be considered an abortion. Rather, the opposition goes much deeper, stemming from a general objection to all forms of contraception and the ability of women to have sex without accepting the possibility of pregnancy and motherhood. The Article concludes in Part VI with evidence of the benefits of increased access to the most effective forms of contraception. Anti-contraception advocates are deploying woman-protective health arguments to limit access to contraception using a strategy similar to that adopted to oppose abortion. Anti-contraception advocates have melded these arguments to contemporary anxieties about heterosexual women’s ability to survive on equal footing with men in today’s sexual and marital “marketplace” in order to stymie efforts to expand contraceptive access and to further restrict access where possible.
Petteri Nieminen, Saara Lappalainen, Pauliina Ristimäki, Markku Myllykangas, Anne-Mari Mustonen
BMC Medical Ethics
Abstract Conscientious objection (CO) to participating in induced abortion is not present in the Finnish health care system or legislation unlike in many other European countries.
Methods: We conducted a questionnaire survey with the 1st- and the last-year medical and nursing students and professionals (548 respondents; response rate 66-100%) including several aspects of the abortion process and their relation to CO in 2013.
Results: The male medical respondents chose later time points of pregnancy than the nursing respondents when considering when the embryo/fetus ‘becomes a person’. Of all respondents, 3.5-14.1% expressed a personal wish to CO.
The medical professionals supported the right to CO more often (34.2%) than the nursing professionals (21.4%), while ≥62.4% could work with someone expressing CO. Yet ≥57.9% of the respondents anticipated social problems at work communities caused by CO.
Most respondents considered self-reported religious/ethical conviction to be adequate for CO but, at the same time, 30.1-50.7% considered that no conviction would be sufficient. The respondents most commonly included the medical doctor conducting surgical or medical abortion to be eligible to CO.
The nursing respondents considered that vacuum suction would be a better justification for CO than medical abortion. The indications most commonly included to potential CO were second-trimester abortions and social reasons.
Among the medical respondents, the men were more willing to grant CO also in case of a life-threatening emergency of the pregnant woman.
Conclusions: While the respondents mostly seemed to consider the continuation of adequate services important if CO is introduced, the viewpoint was often focused on the staff and surgical abortion procedure instead of the patients. The issue proved to be complex, which should be taken into consideration for legislation.
Abstract This article examines, from a human rights perspective, the experience of women, and the practices of health care providers regarding abortion in Chile. Most abortions, as high as 100,000 a year, are obtained surreptitiously and clandestinely, and income and connections play a key role. The illegality of abortion correlates strongly with vulnerability, feelings of guilt and loneliness, fear of prosecution, physical and psychological harm, and social ostracism. Moreover, the absolute legal ban on abortion has a chilling effect on health care providers and endangers women’s lives and health. Although misoprostol use has significantly helped to prevent greater harm and enhance women’s agency, a ban on sales created a black market. Against this backdrop, feminists have taken action in aid of women. For instance, a feminist collective opened a telephone hotline, Linea Aborto Libre (Free Abortion Line), which has been crucial in informing women of the correct and safe use of misoprostol. Chile is at a crossroads. For the first time in 24 years, abortion law reform seems plausible, at least when the woman’s life or health is at risk and in cases of rape and fetal anomalies incompatible with life. The political scenario is unfolding as we write. Congressional approval does not mean automatic enactment of a new law; a constitutional challenge is highly likely and will have to be overcome.
Abstract Conscientious Objection or conscientious refusal (CO) in access to reproductive health care is at the center of current legal debates worldwide. In countries such as the US and the UK, constitutional dilemmas surrounding CO in the context of reproductive health services reveal inadequate policy frameworks for balancing CO rights with women’s rights to access contraception and abortion. The Colombian Constitutional Court’s holistic jurisprudence regarding CO standards has applied international human rights norms so as to not only protect women’s reproductive rights as fundamental rights, but to also introduce clear limits for the exercise of CO in health care settings. This paper reviews Latin American lines of regulation in Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico City to argue that the Colombian Court’s jurisprudence offers a strong guidance for future comprehensive policy approaches that aim to effectively balance tensions between CO and women’s reproductive rights..
Sven Jakob Nordstrand, Magnus Andreas Nordstrand, Per Nortvedt, Morten Magelssen
Journal of Medical Ethics
Abstract Objective To examine medical students’ views on conscientious objection and controversial medical procedures.
Methods: Questionnaire study among Norwegian 5th and 6th year medical students.
Results: Five hundred and thirty-one of 893 students (59%) responded. Respondents object to a range of procedures not limited to abortion (up to 19%)—notably euthanasia (62%), ritual circumcision for boys (52%), assisted reproduction for same-sex couples (9.7%) and ultrasound in the setting of prenatal diagnosis (5.0%). A small minority (4.9%) would object to referrals for abortion. In the case of abortion, up to 55% would tolerate conscientious refusals, whereas 42% would not. Higher proportions would tolerate refusals for euthanasia (89%) or ritual circumcision for boys (72%).
Discussion: A majority of Norwegian medical students would object to participation in euthanasia or ritual circumcision for boys. However, in most settings, many medical students think doctors should not be able to refuse participation on grounds of conscience. A minority would accept conscientious refusals for procedures they themselves do not object to personally. Most students would not accept conscientious refusals for referrals.
Conclusions: Conscientious objection remains a live issue in the context of several medical procedures not limited to abortion. Although most would want a right to object to participation in euthanasia, tolerance towards conscientious objectors in general was moderate or low.
George J Annas, Theodore W Ruger, Jennifer Prah Ruger
New England Journal of Medicine
Extract Our incremental, fragmented, and incomplete health insurance system means that different Americans have different access to health care on the basis of their income, employment status, age, and sex. The decision in Hobby Lobby unravels only one more thread, perhaps, but it tugs on a quilt that is already inequitable and uneven. A central goal of the ACA was to repair some of this incremental fragmentation by universalizing certain basic health care entitlements. In ruling in favor of idiosyncratic religious claims over such universality, the Court has once again expressed its disagreement with this foundational health-policy goal.
Extract Religious groups, doctor’s organizations, ethicists and abortion rights advocates are raising concerns around the review of an Ontario policy that outlines, among other things, physicians’ right to object to patients’ requests for services on moral grounds.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s Physicians and Ontario Human Rights Code is up for its five-year review, with both public and expert opinion being sought. . .
Abstract The law regulating abortion in Italy gives healthcare practitioners the option to make a conscientious objection to activities that are specific and necessary to an abortive intervention. Conscientious objectors among Italian gynaecologists amount to about 70%. This means that only a few doctors are available to perform abortions, and therefore access to abortion is subject to constraints. In 2012 the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPF EN) lodged a complaint against Italy to the European Committee of Social Rights, claiming that the inadequate protection of the right to access abortion implies a violation of the right to health. In this paper I will discuss the Italian situation with respect to conscientious objection to abortion and I will suggest possible solutions to the problem.
