Nancy Berlinger
Extract
Media coverage of conscientious objection tends to cast the refusing health care provider in the role of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms: Here I stand, I can do no other (emphasis on the “I”). Commentators also do this, parsing the rights and responsibilities (but mostly the rights) in a dyadic relationship: Providers versus patients. Paternalism versus autonomy. “I believe” versus “I want.” . . .
Conscientious objection in medicine is not merely a right to be invoked at the bedside, nor a problem to be held in check through a pro forma conscience clause. Rather, [David H] Smith reminds us, openly discussing the nature of providers’ moral objections, while keeping the needs of the suffering person
uppermost, is a “difficult and unglamorous” communal
responsibility of “morally serious people.” Amen.
Berlinger N. Martin Luther at the Bedside. Hastings Cent Rep. 2007;37(2).