Religion Archives - Page 2 of 12 - Protection of Conscience Project Library

Responding to religious patients: why physicians have no business doing theology

Jake Greenblum, Ryan K. Hubbard

Abstract: A survey of the recent literature suggests that physicians should engage religious patients on religious grounds when the patient cites religious considerations for a medical decision. We offer two arguments that physicians ought to avoid engaging patients in this manner. The first is the Public Reason Argument. We explain why physicians are relevantly akin to public officials. This suggests that it is not the physician’s proper role to engage in religious deliberation. This is because the public character of a physician’s role binds him/her to public reason, which precludes the use of religious considerations. The second argument is the Fiduciary Argument. We show that the patient-physician relationship is a fiduciary relationship, which suggests that the patient has the clinical expectation that physicians limit themselves to medical considerations. Since engaging in religious deliberations lies outside this set of considerations, such engagement undermines trust and therefore damages the patient-physician relationship.

Greenblum J, Ryan K ubbard RK. Responding to religious patients: why physicians have no business doing theology. J Med Ethics 2019;45:705-710. Published Online First: 20 Jun 2019. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2019-105452

Divisions, New and Old — Conscience and Religious Freedom at HHS

Lisa H. Harris

New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM — New England Journal of Medicine

Extract
January, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the creation of its Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, explaining that it will allow HHS’s Office of Civil Rights to “more vigorously and effectively enforce existing laws protecting the rights of conscience and religious freedom” and will ensure that “no one is coerced into participating in activities that would violate their consciences, such as abortion, sterilization or assisted suicide.”¹ Responses were as expected: religious conservatives hailed the new division as a needed intervention; public health and clinical leaders and advocates decried it, worrying about its impact on access to care and harm to patients.

HHS leaders’ comments to date suggest that they are uninterested in discrimination against health care providers whose consciences compel them to provide care, and uninterested in injuries to patients caused by care refusals. This framing makes conscience yet another issue dividing Americans, largely along partisan lines.

Harris LH. Divisions, New and Old — Conscience and Religious Freedom at HHS. N Eng J Med 2018 Apr 12;378(15):1369-1371. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1801154. Epub 2018 Mar 14

The status of the human embryo in various religions

William Neaves

Author Summary
Research into human development involves the use of human embryos and their derivative cells and tissues. How religions view the human embryo depends on beliefs about ensoulment and the inception of personhood, and science can neither prove nor refute the teaching of those religions that consider the zygote to be a human person with an immortal soul. This Spotlight article discusses some of the dominant themes that have emerged with regard to how different religions view the human embryo, with a focus on the Christian faith as well as Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and Islamic perspectives.

Neaves W. The status of the human embryo in various religions. Development 2017 144: 2541-2543; doi: 10.1242/dev.151886

Conscientious objection to vaccination

Steve Clarke, Alberto Giubilini, Mary Jean Walker

Abstract
Vaccine refusal occurs for a variety of reasons. In this article we examine vaccine refusals that are made on conscientious grounds that is, for religious, moral, or philosophical reasons. We focus on two questions: first, whether people should be entitled to conscientiously object to vaccination against contagious diseases (either for themselves or for their children) second, if so, to what constraints or requirements should conscientious objection (CO) to vaccination be subject. To address these questions, we consider an analogy between CO to vaccination and CO to military service. We argue that conscientious objectors to vaccination should make an appropriate contribution to society in lieu of being vaccinated. The contribution to be made will depend on the severity of the relevant disease(s), its morbidity, and also the likelihood that vaccine refusal will lead to harm. In particular, the contribution required will depend on whether the rate of CO in a given population threatens herd immunity to the disease in question: for severe or highly contagious diseases, if the population rate of CO becomes high enough to threaten herd immunity, the requirements for CO could become so onerous that CO, though in principle permissible, would be de facto impermissible.

Clarke S, Giubilini A, Walker MJ. Conscientious objection to vaccination. Bioethics. 2017 Mar;31(3):155-161.

The corporately produced conscience: Emergency contraception and the politics of workplace accommodations

Isaac Weiner

Journal of the American Academy of Religion

Abstract
This article uses a chance encounter with a supermarket checkout clerk as an occasion for reframing contemporary debates about workplace accommodations and the religious politics of contraception. Scholarship on workplace religion has tended to assume a rigid distinction between the religious spaces in which conscience is formed and the secular spaces to which claims of conscience are brought. In contrast, I argue that we might productively redescribe employee claims of conscience as corporately produced, rather than emanating from the realm of the private or personal. I reimagine the workplace as an important site of ethical subject formation, as a space in and through which moral claims are constituted, rather than to which they are brought, and I explore how accommodations can produce the very differences they are meant to protect. In this way, my discussion reveals how legal mandates and corporate policies join together to produce new moral subjects.

Weiner I. The corporately produced conscience: Emergency contraception and the politics of workplace accommodations. J Am Acad Religion. 2017 Mar;85(1):31-63.

The Physician and Community of Faithful in the Integrated Care of the Mentally Ill: An Orthodox Christian Discussion of the Physician’s Moral and Professional Obligations

Mariana Cuceu, Theodote Pontikes

Abstract
This article presents the case of a Romanian Orthodox Christian patient in the United States suffering from bipolar disorder. The patient had no family in the United States, and a community of parishioners from the Romanian Orthodox Church, including one of the authors, Mariana Cuceu (MC), cared for him after he was discharged from a psychiatric ward. The case serves as a starting point for exploring the duty of physicians not only to avoid harm but to do good, the importance of coordinating care for such patients and attending to their religious and spiritual needs, as well as the role of the community of Orthodox Christian faithful in responding to the command that we love one another.

Cuceu M, Pontikes T. The Physician and Community of Faithful in the Integrated Care of the Mentally Ill: An Orthodox Christian Discussion of the Physician’s Moral and Professional Obligations. Christ Bioeth (2016) 22 (3): 301-314 doi:10.1093/cb/cbw010

A Christian Physician: Combining Conscience, Philanthropia, and Calling

Gregory W. Rutecki, Michael J. Sleasman

Abstract
When physicians today appeal to “conscience,” it has been alleged such exercises pejoratively reflect “conscience without consequence” as contemporary practitioners are said to be insulated from the consequences of such decisions. It has also been implied these physicians avoid traditional professional responsibilities—including providing charity care and making house or night calls. The assertions demand clarification. Fundamentally, what traits constitute an integrated professionalism specific to Christian physicians? Historical evidence verifies sanctity-of-life affirmations by Christian physicians throughout Church history. However, surveying Christian medical practices in the initial centuries of the Common Era, and more recently in the United States, supports integration of conscience with philanthropy and a rigorous definition of a medical vocation. These suggest there may be deterioration in a holistic commitment to medicine in the United States. Reclaiming an integrated professional paradigm—wherein conscience, philanthropia, and vocation are combined—is essential to an authentic contemporary witness.

Sleasman MJ, Rutecki GW. A Christian Physician: Combining Conscience, Philanthropia, and Calling. Christ Bioeth (2016) 22 (3): 340-362

Implications of Christian Truth Claims for Bioethics

J. Clint Parker

Abstract
Christian bioethics starts with different metaphysical, epistemological, and teleological assumptions. It starts with God as Creator and Sustainer of the universe who as the second person of the Godhead became incarnate as our Redeemer and Lord. Morality reflects God’s nature and is known through reason and intuition guided by revelation. The end of a Christian bioethics is to discover the way our God intends for us to live and to discover the type of person He intends for us to be in order to live a holy and sanctified life. Christian bioethicists will seek integration among their core beliefs and between their beliefs and actions, and they will bear witness to their beliefs in a world that is not yet redeemed. Each contribution in this issue represents an example of these types of Christian integration. Each bears witness to the fact that a Christian bioethics is different.

Parker C. Implications of Christian Truth Claims for Bioethics. Christ Bioeth (2016) 22 (3): 265-275 doi:10.1093/cb/cbw013

Why Are Religious Reasons Dismissed? Euthanasia, Basic Goods, and Gratuitous Evil

Stephen Napier

Abstract
Many proponents of euthanasia eschew appeals to religious premises as good reasons for thinking that human life has intrinsic worth. The reasons offered are that religious reasons do not meet some theory-neutral epistemic standard. My first argument is to show that pro-euthanasia arguments fail to meet those same standards. In order to avoid this incoherence, the rejection of religious reasons is a function of thinking that such reasons are simply false. Arguing against religious belief has typically fallen to the evidential argument from evil. My second argument is to show that the argument from evil must hold to a basic goods account of human life. Such an account is contrary to the view of human life held by most euthanasia proponents. So, euthanasia proponents who reject religious belief on the basis of an argument from evil must hold to a contradictory view of human worth. One cannot both be a euthanasia proponent and reject arguments against euthanasia (that are based in part on religious premises). I explore ways to resolve this tension, but none save pro-euthanasia arguments.

Napier S. Why Are Religious Reasons Dismissed? Euthanasia, Basic Goods, and Gratuitous Evil. Christ Bioeth (2016) 22 (3): 276-300 doi:10.1093/cb/cbw012

Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada: An Ethical Analysis of Conscientious and Religious Objections

Dylan Dahlgren, Fred Koning, John Sloan, Timothy Christie

Abstract
Background: The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has ruled that the federal government is required to remove the provisions of the Criminal Code of Canada that prohibit medical assistance in dying (MAID). The SCC has stipulated that individual physicians will not be required to provide MAID should they have a religious or conscientious objection. Therefore, the pending legislative response will have to balance the rights of the patients with the rights of physicians, other health care professionals, and objecting institutions.

Objective: The objective of this paper is to critically assess, within the Canadian context, the moral probity of individual or institutional objections to MAID that are for either religious or conscientious reasons.

Methods: Deontological ethics and the Doctrine of Double Effect.

Results: The religious or conscientious objector has conflicting duties, i.e., a duty to respect the “right to life” (section 7 of the Charter) and a duty to respect the tenets of his or her religious or conscientious beliefs (protected by section 2 of the Charter).

Conclusion: The discussion of religious or conscientious objections to MAID has not explicitly considered the competing duties of the conscientious objector. It has focussed on the fact that a conscientious objection exists and has ignored the normative question of whether the duty to respect one’s conscience or religion supersedes the duty to respect the patient’s right to life.

Christie T, Sloan J, Dahlgren D, Konging F. Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada: An Ethical Analysis of Conscientious and Religious Objections. BioéthiqueOnLine, 2016, 5/14