Rebecca J Cook, Bernard M Dickens
Extract
Religious initiatives to propose, legislate, and enforce laws that protect denial of care or assistance to patients, (almost invariably women in need), and bar their right of access to lawful health services, are abuses of conscientious objection clauses that aggravate public divisiveness and bring unjustified criticism toward more mainstream religious beliefs. Physicians who abuse the right to conscientious objection and fail to refer patients to nonobjecting colleagues are not fulfilling their profession’s covenant with society.
Cook RJ, Dickens BM. The Growing Abuse of Conscientious Objection. Am Med Ass J Ethics. 2006 May;8(5):337-340.