Human Rights and Obstetric Practice: Legal Issues

THE FUTURE OF OBSTETRICS AND GYNAECOLOGY: The Fundamental Right To Practice and be Trained According to Conscience: An International Meeting of Catholic Obstetricians and Gynaecologist

Organised by the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC) and by MaterCare International (MCI)
Sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Health Pastoral Care ROME, June 17th-20th, 2001

Reproduced with permission

The conscientious objection, which is raised by the professionals, entails a problem of clash of rights and forces us to establish limits as regards fundamental rights.

There is no doubt whatsoever that this objection, which is born in the field of the individual conscience, arises when we are faced with a concrete legal obligation which has no other alternative of fulfilment and forces the professional to explain his refusal to fail to comply with a certain legal norm.

The scientific advances in the field of health today make possible a number of practices and treatments which sometimes place the professionals who have to apply them in a clear dilemma whereby they question the goodness of such practices and not just their legality.

In an increasingly pluralistic society, there will be more and more practices that a doctor may object to such as sterilization, abortion in all its means, contraception, the solution of pregnancies, non-therapeutic genetic modifications, etc.

It would imply a severe injury to the doctors' rights if they were left aside for refusing to undertake certain practices for personal convictions.

In this respect, we would like to draw your attention to the Doctors' Union Law in Uruguay and to their 1995 Ethical Medical Code, Chapter IV, 2, which says, "The rights of the doctors, "says article 30, "All doctors have the right not to be coerced for ideological or economic reasons to perform his profession in a way unworthy to his own science and art". And in article 32, "He has the right to abstain from performing practices which are opposed to his ethical conscience although they are approved by the Law. In that case, he has the obligation to refer the patient to another doctor."

Along these lines, the Spanish general council of official colleges of doctors, in the words of the Central Commission of Deontology, medical right and visa, says, "the refusal by the doctor to perform, for ethical or religious reasons, certain acts which may be commanded or tolerated by the authorities, is an act of great ethical dignity, when the reasons put forward by the doctor are serious, sincere and constant and refer to important and fundamental questions. The objector feels a profound moral rejection for the acts he objects to, to the point that were he to comply with the request, he would be betraying his own identity and conscience."

In Argentina, a bill was approved by the Lower House (Chamber of Deputies - House of Representatives) creating the National Programme of Sexual Health and Responsible Reproduction and another bill was approved modifying the law of the practice of medicine adding Article 19b which says, "The medical professionals and assistants that work in a state or private institution, when required to use preventive, diagnostic or therapeutic methods, will be able to express their conscientious objection rightly substantiated, insofar as no damage, immediate or ulterior, will happen to the patient". Both bills are now expecting approval by the Senate.