Extract The first way to avoid the problems that conscience raises is. . . that physicians and others be required to tell patients what areas of practice would be against their conscience. A second way is not to license physicians, pharmacists or others who will refuse to involve themselves in certain areas of medicine because of conscience. Because the practice of medicine (and pharmacy, etc.) is a social role and society already exercises some control over who may legally perform these roles, adding requirements is not such a radical idea.
Abstract Conclusion “[H]uman law does not prohibit everything that is forbidden by the natural law. Perhaps this aphorism from Saint Thomas Aquinas says it best. In fact, the very reality of conscientious objection concedes as much given that, with the rare exception of a worker being asked to commit a crime, it always involves an objection to an otherwise legal act. Of course, it is likely no coincidence that those who support or oppose laws conferring a right to object to a particular act seem to also oppose or support, respectively, the act in general. Perhaps, as in the case of the abortion based laws, this is simply the result of political compromise. However, such reflexive logic can grow suspect when it extends in a more general manner, whether that be in providing a global right to refuse in the private workplace or, to the contrary, in barring any refusals at all. As noted from the start, this article provides no panacea. Rather, it simply suggests that the trend of open-ended conscience protection that is presently sweeping the nation in the health care arena insufficiently considers the interests of affected employers in at-will authority. The trend is inconsistent with treatments of conscience in law and culture generally, and ignores the fundamental prejudice and public policy bases that otherwise operate in the limited exceptions to the at-will rule that have been developed to this point. Finally, by removing the issue from the deliberative process between employers and their employees, the trend threatens to balkanize both sides in a manner that is good neither for them nor the communities they serve. Conscience is an important and vigorous principle in our common life. For it to remain so on the job, it must act like any other value in an otherwise free and fair system-submit itself to the marketplace of both work and ideas.
Extract Conclusion In conclusion, states may provide pharmacists and pharmacies with rights of conscience without infringing upon the constitutional rights of patients. Pharmacists’ beliefs should be respected and accommodated, especially when there are ways to do so without depriving patients of validly prescribed medications. Specific conscience clause legislation is the best method for protecting pharmacists’ consciences, and such legislation also provides the most clarity and certainty when well- drafted. Conscience clause legislation should address who is covered, whether a religious objection is required, the medications involved, the scope of the protection, any requirements for compliance, and whether a private cause of action is created. Such legislation provides adequate protection to pharmacists and clarifies the rights of both pharmacists and patients. If such legislation operates in tandem with policies such as pharmacist prescribing, doctor dispensing, and doctor referrals to pharmacies known to handle the prescription, which have shown promise in some states, then patients should have adequate access to medications without forcing pharmacists to compromise their beliefs.
LL Wynn, Joanna N Erdman, Angel M Foster, James Trussell
Studies in Family Planning
Abstract This article compares the ethical pivot points in debates over nonprescription access to emergency contraceptive pills in Canada and the United States. These include women’s right to be informed about the contraceptive method and its mechanism of action, pharmacists’ conscientious objection concerning the dispensing of emergency contraceptive pills, and rights and equality of access to the method, especially for poor women and minorities. In both countries, arguments in support of expanding access to the pills were shaped by two competing orientations toward health and sexuality. The first, “harm reduction,” promotes emergency contraception as attenuating the public health risks entailed in sex. The second orientation regards access to pills as a question of women’s right to engage in nonprocreative sex and to choose from among all reproductive health-care options. The authors contend that arguments for expanding access to emergency contraceptive pills that frame issues in terms of health and science are insufficient bases for drug regulation; ultimately, women’s health is also a matter of women’s rights.
Abstract National and international courts and tribunals are increasingly ruling that although states may aim to deter unlawful abortion by criminal penalties, they bear a parallel duty to inform physicians and patients of when abortion is lawful. The fear is that women are unjustly denied safe medical procedures to which they are legally entitled, because without such information physicians are deterred from involvement. With particular attention to the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee, the Constitutional Court of Colombia, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal, and the US Supreme Court, decisions are explained that show the responsibility of states to make rights to legal abortion transparent. Litigants are persuading judges to apply rights to reproductive health and human rights to require states’ explanations of when abortion is lawful, and governments are increasingly inspired to publicize regulations or guidelines on when abortion will attract neither police nor prosecutors’ scrutiny.
Extract Recomendations & Conclusion The United States Supreme Court has identified “the two primary goals of probation—rehabilitation and protecting society from future violations.” Florida can and should redraft its chemical castration statute to comport with these policy goals, pass constitutional muster, and overcome implementation hurdles. In order to draft an effective statute, however, the legislature must acknowledge, as it has in the reports of both chambers, that treatment with MPA has only been shown to be an effective therapy for paraphiliacs when those paraphiliacs volunteer for the treatment, when the treatment is administered in conjunction with psychotherapy, and when certain other criteria are met. . .
Extract Conscience clauses in this country are becoming dangerously broad and over-inclusive. What was once a protection for physicians who objected to performing abortions is now a tool for religious activists to obstruct a patient’s right to contraceptives, sterilization, and any other medical procedure that they feel is “morally” wrong. The Legislature must place limits on these clauses to protect patients’ rights. At the onset of new medical research on stem cells and infertility treatments, it is crucial that Congress enact legislation that will protect patients’ rights to these treatments. There needs to be a balance between the doctor’s right of conscience and the patient’s right to treatment.
Abstract The paper covers a wide scope in an attempt to examine, in the space available, some of the central cultural and constitutional facts that form the background to recent legal decisions that touch on “religious liberty” in Canada. Important, as well, are recent insights from political theorists, particularly those who examine the nature of liberalism. . . This Article will show that in the last decade the Canadian judicial system has heard a series of important cases in which principles were raised that give a truly Canadian perspective to the relationship between church and state, and the person and the community, in ways that are not developed elsewhere. These cases may provide useful grounding to the principles of accommodation of religion in the public sphere and inclusion of religion in the public sphere, and, further, may reduce the bifurcations that obscure issues where they should elucidate.
Extract Public health officials may have legitimate questions about the merits of HPV vaccine mandates, in light of the financial and logistic burdens these may impose on families and schools, and also may be uncertain about adverse-event rates in mass-scale programs. But given that the moral objections to requiring HPV vaccination are largely emotional, this source of resistance to mandates is difficult to justify.
Rebecca J. Cook, Joanna N. Erdman, Bernard M. Dickens
International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics
Abstract National and international courts and tribunals are increasingly ruling that although states may aim to deter unlawful abortion by criminal penalties, they bear a parallel duty to inform physicians and patients of when abortion is lawful. The fear is that women are unjustly denied safe medical procedures to which they are legally entitled, because without such information physicians are deterred from involvement. With particular attention to the European Court of Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Committee, the Constitutional Court of Colombia, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal, and the US Supreme Court, decisions are explained that show the responsibility of states to make rights to legal abortion transparent. Litigants are persuading judges to apply rights to reproductive health and human rights to require states’ explanations of when abortion is lawful, and governments are increasingly inspired to publicize regulations or guidelines on when abortion will attract neither police nor prosecutors’ scrutiny.
