Resisting Ethical Aggression
2018
- 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. . .
Full
Text
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'. . .
Full
Text
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. . .
Full
Text
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. . .
Full
Text
'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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Text
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.. . .
Full
Text
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.
Full
Text
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. . .
Full
Text
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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Text
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. . .
Full
Text
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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Text
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. . . .
Full
Text
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