Protection of Conscience Project
Protection of Conscience Project
www.consciencelaws.org
Service, not Servitude

Service, not Servitude

Resisting Ethical Aggression


2018

The abortion law is about coercion and manipulation

  • Dr. Noreen O'Carroll*  |  I was very struck by the phrase “the abuse of conscience” used by Pope Francis in his apology for the abuse perpetrated on minors by members of the clergy and hierarchy; he apologised not only for sexual abuse and the abuse of power but also for the abuse of conscience (Letter to the People of God, August 20, 2018). The Catholic Church is not the only institution that has failed to protect people from the abuse of conscience. The Oireachtas has questions to answer in this regard too.
    Full text

2015

A watchdog in need of a leash
Ontario College of Physicians manipulates consultation process

  • Sean Murphy* |  . . .a working group at the College of Physicians and Surgeons released a draft policy . . .for a second stage of consultation. . .  The most contentious element in POHR is a requirement that physicians who object to a procedure for reasons of conscience must help the patient find a colleague who will provide it.  The consultation process is intended to provide the public and members of the profession an opportunity to comment on policies being developed by the College . . . Remarkably, it appears that the College is attempting to manipulate the current consultation process by intervening in the Discussion Forum in order to discredit critics and defend its draft policy. . .
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Regulator's proposal to remove pharmacists' conscience rights is unethical, unnecessary and quite possibly illegal

  • Peter Saunders* | Should pharmacists be forced to dispense drugs for what they consider to be unethical practices – like emergency contraception, gender reassignment, abortion and assisted suicide?  Or should they have the right to exercise freedom of conscience by either referring to a colleague or opting out? The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC), the independent British regulator for pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy premises, is proposing to replace the current 'right to refer' with a 'duty to dispense'. . .
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2014

 Entrenching a 'duty to do wrong' in medicine
Canadian government funds project to suppress freedom of conscience and religion

  • Sean Murphy* |A 25 year old woman who went to an Ottawa walk-in clinic for a birth control prescription was told that the physician offered only Natural Family Planning and did not prescribe or refer for contraceptives or related services. She was given a letter explaining that his practice reflected his "medical judgment" and "professional ethical concerns and religious values." She obtained her prescription at another clinic about two minutes away and posted the physician's letter on Facebook. The resulting crusade against the physician and two like-minded colleagues spilled into mainstream media and earned a blog posting by Professor Carolyn McLeod on Impact Ethics. . .
    Full text
 

2012

 "Take two aspirin and call me after the election"
Responding to Charo RA. Warning: Contraceptive Drugs May Cause Political Headaches
Perspective, N Engl J Med. 2012 Mar 14

  • Sean Murphy* | "Take two aspirin and call me after the election" is the kind of advice one would expect from former members of President Obama's transition and HHS review teams in response to protests about the HHS birth control mandate, so the closing words of Professor R. Alta Charo in her NEJM Perspective column are not unexpected. . .
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2010

Plan C for Conscience

  • Cristina Alarcon* | I was thrilled to learn that Washington State will be creating new rules for pharmacists who have conscientious objections to providing services or products they find morally objectionable. The new regulations would give plaintiffs in a Washington lawsuit -- the owners of Ralph's Thriftway pharmacy and two pharmacists -- the right to refuse to stock or dispense Plan B "morning after pill" based on their belief that life is sacred from the moment of conception. . .
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'We insist: leave your conscience at the door'

  • Cristina Alarcon* | I recently wrote an article expressing my delight that Washington State pharmacists will no longer be forced to dispense products or provide services they find morally objectionable. . . . My happiness at the Washington victory was . . . squelched by the plethora of intolerant, and in some cases highly dogmatic, statements posted by fellow pharmacists. . .
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Conscience Clauses: Responding to a divided ethic in health care

  • Wesley J. Smith* | This is the last 18 minutes of a lecture given in Seattle, Washington.  Beginning with his observation that assisted suicide is legal in Washington State, he explains the consequences of this for pharmacists, and goes on to discuss the need for protection of conscience laws. The title of this part of the lecture has been supplied by the Project.
    Video
 

Telephone installation, lethal injection and conscientious objection in pharmacy
Responding to Archer F. "Religious Conscience Should not Outweigh Professional Obligations to Patients." National Post (Holy Post BLOG),18 July, 2010.

  • Sean Murphy* | . . .Mr. Archer's comparison of pharmacy services to telephone service is also unsatisfactory because it presumes that all pharmacy services are morally equivalent to telephone service; that, for example, no moral or ethical questions are raised by the assertion that pharmacists are obliged to provide abortifacients and embryocides, and may eventually be required to provide drugs for suicide, euthanasia and executions.. . .
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2009

Professionals or automatons?

  • Cristina Alarcon* | Should pharmacists have the right to act according to their consciences, or are they prescription-filling robots? . . . A Canadian pharmacist and bioethicist, Cristina Alarcon, explains what is at stake in her profession.
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The Hijacking of Moral Conscience from Pharmacy Practice: A Canadian Perspective

  • Cristina Alarcon* | . . .While Canadian pharmacy regulatory boards consider themselves to be world leaders in promoting professionalism and pharmaceutical care in pharmacy practice, most have failed to properly discharge their duty of care to pharmacists who seek to live a holistic private and professional life that is, for them, ethically coherent and unified. . .
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Even Many Doctors Want to Force Colleagues to Violate Hippocratic Oath

  • Wesley J. Smith* | . . .forcing a doctor refer a patient to a provider that he or she knows will do the abortion or assist the suicide is to force the referring doctor to be complicit in those acts. Thus, while there certainly should be cooperation in transferring records from the original doctor to a replacement if a patient decides to go that route, no dissenting physicians should not be required ethically to participate directly or indirectly in acts that explicitly violate the Hippocratic Oath. . .
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Forced Speech: Pushing Against Conscientious Objection
by Medical Practitioners to Abortion in California

  • Wesley J. Smith* | I have been reporting that doctors and other medical professionals who wish to hold to an orthodox Hippocratic view of medical professionalism are going to increasingly be forced by law to either be complicit in these actions or become podiatrists. The most blunt method of destroying Hippocratic medicine in this manner is the new Victoria, Australia law requiring doctors to either perform an abortion upon request, or find another doctor for the patient who will. . .
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Pro-choicers deny doctors right to choose life

  • Susan Martinuk* | Abortion on demand may soon take on a whole new meaning in Alberta. The Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons has rewritten its guidelines covering the standard of care that doctors must provide. . .
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Conscientious Objection: Resisting Ethical Aggression in Medicine
Responding to Cantor JD. Conscientious Objection Gone Awry - Restoring Selfless Professionalism in Medicine. N Eng J Med 360;15, 9 April, 2009

  • Sean Murphy* | Judging from the title of her article, Professor Julie D. Cantor believes that "selfless professionalism" in medicine is being destroyed by health care workers who will not do what they believe to be wrong. She also implies that Americans have access to health care only because health care workers are compelled to provide services that they find morally repugnant . . .Such anxiety is inconsistent with the fact that religious believers and organizations have been providing health care in the United States for generations. . . .
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2008

Re: Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code

Ontario Human Rights Commission (August, 2008)

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is >the regulatory and licensing authority for physicians and surgeons practising in Ontario, Canada. In February, 2008, the Ontario Human Rights Commission recommended that the exercise of freedom of conscience by physicians be restricted. The College then drafted a policy that demanded that Ontario physicians sacrifice their freedom of conscience to avoid prosecution by Ontario's human rights apparatus.  See Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Responses and Submissions to the Colllege of Physicians and Surgeons

Protection of Conscience Project

  • . . .Physicians who decline to do something they believe to be wrong are not discriminating against individuals on grounds prohibited by the Ontario Human Rights Code. Their concern is to avoid direct or indirect complicity in wrongdoing, not with the personal characteristics, status or inclinations of a patient. . .
    Submission

Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform

  • . . .I recently read the CPSO's draft policy document, "Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code." In reviewing the document I was struck by its intolerance towards the deeply-held, truth-based beliefs of physicians. . .
    Full text of letter

Canadian Family Physician

  • . . . Of course, it is essential that physicians treat patients with respect and courtesy even if they have differences of opinion. And it is possible to maintain healthy relationships in difficult situations without physicians having to act against their conscience. . .
    Full text of editorial (Kelsall D. Whose right? Can Fam Physician 2008;54:1353

Canadian Physicians for Life

  •  . . . The College documents present an unseemly image of the College preparing to shine its shoes before inspection by a higher authority. And yet human rights commissions, as you are undoubtedly aware, are increasingly scrutinized for various abuses which they themselves engender. . .
    Full text of interim response
  • . . . It is not the responsibility of any physician to manage, promote, or enhance access to a procedure which he or she finds medically harmful and morally repugnant. The ethical bankruptcy of any society which would punish physicians who object to abortion, and the imprudence of doctors sitting in regulatory institutions who would threaten to punish their objecting colleagues, should be obvious. . .
    Full text of submission

Catholic Archbishop of Toronto

  • . . .If a physician cannot in conscience perform or facilitate an action that is requested, wil that physician face the threat of being sanctioned for violating a patient's human rights and for professional misconduct?  Is that the cost of being true to one's conscience? . . .
    Full text of letter

Catholic Civil Rights League

  • . . .Canada has an established custom of accommodating sincerely held religious and conscientious convictions as much as possible. The expectation that physicians must set aside their beliefs with regard to treatments or referrals that violate their conscience is unreasonable . . .
    Full text of submission

Catholic Organization for Life and Family

  • . . . COLF is concerned about the policy's implicit expectations upon physicians with respect to engaging in a medical act to which they may have a conscientious objection. Second, we are concerned about the policy's seeming redefinition and narrowing of the role of the physician vis-à-vis the patient and within society. . .
    Full text of submission

Centre for Cultural Renewal

  • . . .Human Rights, it seems, now entails monitoring conflicting beliefs in society, turning them into one half of a human rights issue, and then, by eradicating the possibility of dissent (for that is what a physician's ability to refuse to refer amounts to) forcing some citizens to effectively implicate themselves in the beliefs of other citizens. . .
    Full text of submission

Chalcedon Foundation

  • . . .Canada's human rights commissions and tribunals have become a law unto themselves. They are not bound by rules of evidence, precedent, or courtroom procedure. The state pays all the plaintiffs' legal costs, but defendants must pay their own. "Feelings" are accepted as evidence, and the "likelihood" of damages being incurred, at some indefinite time in the future, substitutes for real damages that can be shown to have been incurred. . .
    Full text of article

Christian Legal Fellowship

  • . . . As there is no basis in the law or in the established policies of the OHRC, CMA, or CPSO for the draft policy, we respectfully request that the policy be rejected. . .
    Full text of submission

Ontario Medical Association

  • . . .It is the OMA's position that physicians maintain a right to exercise their own moral judgment and freedom of choice in making decisions regarding medical care and that the CPSO not insert itself into the interpretation of human rights statutes. . .
    (OMA President's Update, Volume 13, No. 23, 11 September, 2008.  Removed from website.)
  • The Ontario Medical Association wants the provincial licensing body to kill a proposal that would force physicians to put aside their religious beliefs when making decisions in their medical practice.
    "We will not defy our beliefs, doctors say" (National Post, 13 September, 2008)

Fr. Raymond De Souza

  • A timely intervention has prevented the cancer from metastasizing, but aggressive treatment is still needed. . . There was a real danger of metastasis, as the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) attempted to spread its corruption to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO). The timely intervention came from the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) and other public voices. . .
    "Human Rights" vs. Basic Freedoms

Dr. T.E. Lau

  • . . .Please reconsider forcing physicians to go against their conscience. With the a new euthanasia bill on the horizon and the lack of any limitation to abortion for any reason or at any stage, it is clear to me that taking this stand will endanger the principled, conscientious, and responsible care of our patients, not just now but in the years to come.
    Full text of letter

Dr. Margaret Somerville

  • . . .Unlike the mechanic, however, a physician who refuses to be involved, for instance, in abortion, is not providing the service to one patient but not another, or basing his refusal on any characteristic of the patient. Rather, he is refusing the service to all patients and doing so because of the nature of the procedure, which he believes is morally and ethically wrong. . .
    "Denying doctors free conscience unconscionable"

John W. Veldkamp

  • I have just become aware of the document "Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code" and I feel compelled to inform the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons (the "College") of my concerns that this document is both deeply flawed and unworkable. . .
    Full text of letter

Dr. Stephen Genuis

  • . . .the policy of coercing ethical doctors to do what they feel is unethical-whether by threat of lawsuits or disciplinary action-displays supreme intolerance of diverse views and choice precisely at a time in Canada when human rights commissions are demanding more tolerance, heralding choice, and proclaiming respect for diversity. . . . it seems physicians are entitled to express their opinions to patients only as long as they say the "right" things according to the OHRC grid. . .
    Discrimination on the basis of ethical orientation

Rory Leishman

  • The Ontario Human Rights Commission is truly evil. By threatening to prosecute physicians under the Ontario Human Rights Code for refusing to participate in an abortion on demand, it has perpetrated one of the worst attacks on the right to conscience of physicians since Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Reich Commissar for the occupied Netherlands, tried to compel Dutch physicians to take part in the Nazi euthanasia program for the "useless, incurably sick." . . .
    Physicians: Act on your convictions

Louis DeSerres

Respect for conscience must be a social value

  • Margaret Somerville* | An effort is also underway by pro-abortion advocates. . . to have the United Nations declare access to abortion a universal human right. Healthcare professionals who, despite such coercion, follow their conscience risk a variety of legal threats. . . .[T]his state of affairs has caused deep concern for many healthcare professionals. What has led to this situation and what might be its wider consequences? To respond to that question and deal with this situation, I believe we need to understand two new realities, a political reality and a medical reality. . .
    Full Text

2007

Re:The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine

ACOG Committee on Ethics Opinion No. 385: November, 2007

In October, 2005, a letter from the President of the ACOG to US Senators included a request that conscientious objectors to abortion be forced by law to facilitate the procedure by referral. Perhaps recognizing that the letter had failed to make an ethical case for mandatory referral, the ACOG Committee on Ethics released an opinion that purported to do so. The opinion, in conjunction with a bulletin from the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG), poses a significant threat to freedom of conscience for American physicians specializing in obstetrics and gynaecology. See The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine

Reponses to ACOG Committee on Ethics Opinion No. 385

Christian Medical Association

  • . . .The way things are going, some would actually force out of the profession those physicians who have moral objections to procedures like abortion, and that loss of physicians, especially obstetricians and gynecologists who, as you know, are already leaving a practice because of malpractice insurance costs, would have a severe impact on the delivery of healthcare. . .
    Presentation to President's Council on Bioethics

Christian Medical Association et al

  •  . . . The ACOG statement suggests a profound misunderstanding of the nature and exercise of conscience, an underlying bias against persons of faith and an apparent attempt to disenfranchise physicians who oppose ACOG's political activism on abortion. . .
    Joint Letter of Protest

Christian Medical & Dental Associations

  •  . . . Healthcare professionals and patients must be made aware that such opinions, if accepted by the profession as a whole, will have a devastating effect on the practice of medicine. Mandating such an approach would have the effect of making healthcare professionals mere technicians, stripping from them the ability to apply moral reasoning to their practices.
    Critique of ACOG Committee Opinion #385

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists

  • . . .We find it unethical and unacceptable that a small committee of ACOG members would pretend to provide the moral compass for 49,000 other members on one of the most ethically controversial issues in our society and within our medical specialty-and that without ever consulting the full membership. . .
    Response to the ACOG Ethics Committee Opinion # 385

Catholic Medical Association (USA)

  •  . . .the Opinion not only fails to provide helpful guidance, but is so flawed that it threatens the reputation of ACOG itself. The Catholic Medical Association urges ACOG to rescind this opinion immediately. . . The Opinion contains a seriously flawed and gratuitously condescending approach to conscience.
    Letter of Protest

American Health and Human Services Secretary

  • . . . It appears that the interaction of the ABOG Bulletin with the ACOG ethics report would force physicians to violate their conscience by referring patients for abortions or taking other objectionable actions, or risk losing their board certification. . .
    Full text of letter

Christopher Kaczor

  • . . . the balance struck by the committee between the right of conscience of physicians and the reproductive health care of women so emphasizes patient autonomy that it turns physicians into medical automatons forced to act against their best ethical and medical judgment. . .
    Pro-Life Doctors: A New Oxymoron?

Paul Adams

  • . . . None of this has anything to do with imposing my views on the client, as anti-exemptionists and militant secularists often claim. . . . "Conscientious objection. . .implies the physician's right not to participate in what she thinks morally wrong, even if the patient demands it. It does not presume the right to impose her will or conception of the good on the patient."  . . .
    Attacking the conscience rights of their own members

Robert P. George

  • . . .The ACOG Committee report is an exercise in moral philosophy. It proposes a definition of conscience, something that cannot be supplied by science or medicine. It then proposes to instruct its readers on "…the limits of conscientious refusals describing how claims of conscience should be weighed in the context of other values critical to the ethical provision of health care." . . .
    Aborting our physicians' rights of conscience
  • . . . Dr. Edmund Pellegrino asked me to offer a formal comment on Dr. Lyerly's presentation of her committee's report. I was happy for the opportunity to call her and her colleagues out on their attempt to use their special authority as physicians to force fellow physicians to practice medicine in accord with the their contestable - and contested ­ philosophical, ethical, and political judgments. And make no mistake about it: at every key point in the report, their judgments are contestable and contested. . .
    Personal Opinions and Ideology, Not "Science"

E. Christian Brugger

  • . . .In this essay, I will elaborate the ACOG account, juxtapose it to what I call the "classical account" as defended in Western philosophy, and finally answer the question whether healthcare providers have a right to refuse to treat some patients. . .
    Abortion, Conscience and Health Care Provider Rights

Healthcare without Conscience - Unconscionable!

  • Gene Rudd* | The governor of Illinois has told pharmacists to check their conscience at the door. They are not to allow their personal convictions to alter their professional activities. Specifically, pharmacies are to fill all legal prescriptions, even if doing so is contrary to deeply held moral or religious beliefs of the pharmacists. .
    Full Text

2006

To Market, To Market
Responding to Vischer, Robert, The Pharmacist Wars
The American Enterprise Online, 14 February, 2006

  • Sean Murphy* | . . . It is remarkable that a free-market advocate should assign the state the function of ensuring access to a product - an economic function admirably achieved by free markets - while denying the state a role in the preservation of fundamental freedoms - a political function for which it exists. Happily, it is possible to resolve this contradiction, restoring to the market and to the state the functions proper to each, and to do so in a way that may prove congenial to Professor Vischer.. . .
    Full Text (Legal Commentary)

Re: "Abortion: Ensuring Access"

Canadian Medical Association Journal (July, 2006)

In July, 2006, the Canadian Medical Association Journal published a guest editorial by Sanda Rodgers of the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, and Jocelyn Downie, of the Health Law Institute, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. The editorial appears to have been an attempt to bully objecting physicians who refuse to refer patients for abortion by menacing assertions about legal and ethical obligations. See Abortion: Ensuring Access.

Responses to the editorial

2005

The Silence of Good People and Non-cooperation with Evil
Responding to: Charo RA. The Celestial Fire of Conscience - Refusing to Deliver Medical Care
N Eng J Med 352:24, June 16, 2005

  • Sean Murphy* | It is especially noteworthy that, in an essay about the exercise of freedom of conscience by health care workers, Professor R. Alta Charo has virtually nothing to say about freedom or conscience. "Conscience clauses," yes: conscientious objection, to be sure: and she mentions acts of conscience and the right of conscience. But nothing about freedom, and, on the subject of conscience itself, the most she can muster is, "Conscience is a tricky business." . . .
    Full Text
 

BLOG on the Reading Down of Conscience Protection
Responding to: Charo RA. The Celestial Fire of Conscience - Refusing to Deliver Medical Care
N Eng J Med 352:2471-2473; 24, June 16, 2005

  • Iain T. Benson* | . . . This is the standard line from those who wish to frustrate the proper accommodation of conscience and religion. Resist accommodation by insisting on "one standard" and "non-discriminatory access" to the "service" sought. It is our old friend "convergence pluralism" again - - this time in medical ethics. . . "one size fits all" is the latest attempt to force the views of some on everyone and that is, itself, discriminatory, totalitarian and unethical itself. . .
    Full Text
 

Silencing the Conscience of Medical Professionals
Responding to: Charo RA. The Celestial Fire of Conscience - Refusing to Deliver Medical Care
N Eng J Med 352:24, June 16, 2005

  • John Mallon* | . . . Professor R. Alta Charo. . . thinks . . . that the law should require health care professionals to violate their consciences in certain cases . . .What is truly breathtaking here is that she is willing to use the very words of Gandhi and King (and elsewhere, C.S. Lewis) to argue against precisely what they were fighting for: a just society in which one does not have to suffer punishment for following one's conscience. . .
    Full Text
 

Postscript for the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada:
Morgentaler vs. Professors Cook and Dickens
Responding to Cook RJ, Dickens BM, "In Response". J.Obstet Gyanecol Can 2004; 26(2)112;  Cook RJ, Dickens BM, Access to emergency contraception [letter] J.Obstet Gynaecol Can 2004; 26(8):706.

  • Sean Murphy* | . . . the arguments of Professors Cook and Dickens for mandatory referral are unsupported and even contradicted by their own legal and ethical references. Regulatory officials with the power to enforce the views of Cook and Dickens are unlikely to discover this in the pages of the Journal, since, by editorial fiat, the discussion was terminated with the publication of their 'final word' on the subject. Here, then, is the postscript to the discussion, supplemented by developments in the United Kingdom and Belgium that have a bearing on the issue. . .
    Full Text (Legal Commentary)

2004

Address to College Council and Pharmacists AGM, College of Pharmacists of B.C.

  • Ann Nadalini* | . . .I will not be forced to dispense gravol injection, zopiclone, or ECP's, if I feel it is not in the best interest of my client. To do so would be to try to separate my intellect from my ethics. To do that would create a corrupt personality, which is untrue to my client and myself. . .
    Full Text
 

Service or Servitude: Reflections on Freedom of Conscience for Health Care Workers Responding to Cantor J, Baum K., The Limits of Conscientious Objection - May Pharmacists Refuse to Fill Prescriptions for Emergency Contraception?
N Eng J Med 351;19, November 4, 2004

  • Sean Murphy* | . . .As the exercise of freedom of speech does not force others to agree with the speaker, the exercise of freedom of conscience does not force others to agree with an objector. Concerns about access to legal services or products can be addressed by dialogue, prudent planning, and the exercise of tolerance, imagination and political will. A proportionate investment in freedom of conscience for health care workers is surely not an unreasonable expectation. . .
    Full Text

2003

Address to College Council and Pharmacists AGM, College of Pharmacists of B.C.

  • Cristina Alarcon* | . . .Since the inauguration of the new Code of Ethics in 1997, it has been insinuated that pharmacists are incapable of treating a client with due sensitivity and respect, while at the same time having the courage, integrity, and uprightness to act according to one's own convictions. . .
    Full Text

2002

Standing up for your beliefs

  • Cristina Alarcon* | . . . For the past 3 years I have been challenging our Pharmacy Licensing Body's Code of Ethics, which basically asks pharmacists to violate their conscience, to violate their deeply held belief that life is valuable from the moment of conception. . .
    Full Text

2001

Conscientious Objectors: Canaries in the Ethical Mineshaft

  • Maria Bizecki* | . . .Freedom of conscience is an inalienable human right owed to everyone. Protection of conscience laws resist the development of a two-tier system of civil rights within health care professions, one tier being those who prescribe to a universal, unchangeable ethic, and the other tier being those who live by a relativistic, changing "majority opinion" ethic. . .
    Full Text
 

Customer Isn't Always Right on Issues of Conscience

  • Susan Martinuk* | . . . let's not kid ourselves in saying that conscience issues are limited to the abortion debate. How we legislate matters of conscience now could ultimately (and intentionally) pave the road to drone-like response to customer-driven requests for chemicals and technologies that are highly controversial, deadly and/or have more to do with scientific and social experimentation than legitimate health care. . .
    Full Text

2000

In Defence of the New Heretics: A Response to Frank Archer
Responding to Archer F. Emergency Contraceptives and Professional Ethics.
Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal, May 2000, Vol. 133, No. 4, p. 22-26

  • Sean Murphy* | Before taking action that they may later regret, those who would coerce or discriminate against conscientious objectors, or drive them from the practice of pharmacy, would do well to revisit Frank Archer's critical review . . . Although many pharmacists have accepted the review as a definitive ethical statement, it is insufficient warrant for repression of freedom of conscience within the profession.
    Full Text