Historically associated with military service, conscientious objection has become a significant phenomenon in health care. Mark Wicclair offers a comprehensive ethical analysis of conscientious objection in three representative health care professions: medicine, nursing and pharmacy. He critically examines two extreme positions: the 'incompatibility thesis', that it is contrary to the professional obligations of practitioners to refuse provision of any service within the scope of their professional competence; and 'conscience absolutism', that they should be exempted from performing any action contrary to (...) their conscience. He argues for a compromise approach that accommodates conscience-based refusals within the limits of specified ethical constraints. He also explores conscientious objection by students in each of the three professions, discusses conscience protection legislation and conscience-based refusals by pharmacies and hospitals, and analyzes several cases. His book is a valuable resource for scholars, professionals, trainees, students, and anyone interested in this increasingly important aspect of health care. (shrink)

Recognition of conscientious objection seems reasonable in relation to controversial and contentious issues, such as physician assisted suicide and abortion. However, physicians also advance conscience‐based objections to actions and practices that are sanctioned by established norms of medical ethics, and an account of their moral force can be more elusive in such contexts. Several possible ethical justifications for recognizing appeals to conscience in medicine are examined, and it is argued that the most promising one is respect for moral integrity. It (...) is also argued that an appeal to conscience has significant moral weight only if the core ethical values on which it is based correspond to one or more core values in medicine. Finally, several guidelines pertaining to appeals to conscience and their ethical evaluation are presented. (shrink)

A US Department of Health and Human Services Final Rule, Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care, and a proposed bill in the British House of Lords, the Conscientious Objection Bill, may well warrant a concern that—to borrow a phrase Daniel Callahan applied to self-determination—conscientious objection in health care has “run amok.” Insofar as there are no significant constraints or limitations on accommodation, both rules endorse an approach that is aptly designated “conscience absolutism.” There are two common strategies to counter (...) conscience absolutism and prevent conscientious objection in medicine from running amok. One, non-toleration, is to decline to accommodate physicians who refuse to provide legal, professionally accepted, clinically appropriate medical services within the scope of their clinical competence. The other, compromise or reasonable accommodation, is to impose constraints on accommodation. Several arguments for non-toleration are critically analyzed, and I argue that none warrants its acceptance. I maintain that non-toleration is an excessively blunt instrument to prevent conscientious objection in medicine from running amok. Instead, I defend a more nuanced contextual approach that includes constraints on accommodation. (shrink)

It is argued that the primary aim of institutional management is to protect the moral integrity of health professionals without significantly compromising other important values and interests. Institutional policies are recommended as a means to promote fair, consistent, and transparent management of conscience-based refusals. It is further recommended that those policies include the following four requirements: (1) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s/surrogate’s timely access to information, counseling, and referral. (2) Conscience-based (...) refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s timely access to health care services offered within the institution. (3) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if the accommodation will not impose excessive burdens on colleagues, supervisors, department heads, other administrators, or the institution. (4) Whenever feasible, health professionals should provide advance notification to department heads or supervisors. Formal review may not be required in all cases, but when it is appropriate, several recommendations are offered about standards and the review process. A key recommendation is that when reviewing an objector’s reasons, contrary to what some have proposed, it is not appropriate to adopt an adversarial approach modelled on military review boards’ assessments of requests for conscientious objector status. According to the approach recommended, the primary function of reviews of objectors’ reasons is to engage them in a process of reflecting on the nature and depth of their objections, with the objective of facilitating moral clarity on the part of objectors rather than enabling department heads, supervisors, or ethics committees to determine whether conscientious objections are sufficiently genuine. (shrink)

In response to physicians who refuse to provide medical services that are contrary to their ethical and/or religious beliefs, it is sometimes asserted that anyone who is not willing to provide legally and professionally permitted medical services should choose another profession. This article critically examines the underlying assumption that conscientious objection is incompatible with a physician’s professional obligations (the “incompatibility thesis”). Several accounts of the professional obligations of physicians are explored: general ethical theories (consequentialism, contractarianism, and rights-based theories), internal morality (...) (essentialist and non-essentialist conceptions), reciprocal justice, social contract, and promising. It is argued that none of these accounts of a physician’s professional obligations unequivocally supports the incompatibility thesis. (shrink)

Typically, a refusal to provide a medical service is an instance of conscientious objection only when the medical service is legal, professionally accepted, and clinically appropriate. That is, conscientious objection typically occurs only when practitioners reject prevailing norms or practices. Insofar as refusing to provide antibiotics for a viral infection does not violate prevailing clinical norms, there is no need for the physician in Case 1 to justify his refusal to provide antibiotics by appealing to his conscience.1 By contrast, insofar (...) as emergency contraception is legal and does not violate prevailing norms of good medical practice, the physician in Case 6 cannot justify his refusal to provide EC by... (shrink)

Discussions of appeals to conscience by healthcare professionals typically focus on situations in which they object to providing a legal and professionally permitted service, such as abortion, sterilization, prescribing or dispensing emergency contraception, and organ retrieval pursuant to donation after cardiac death. “Negative claims of conscience” will designate such appeals to conscience. When healthcare professionals advance a negative claim of conscience, they do so to secure an exemption from ethical, professional, institutional, and/or legal obligations or requirements to provide a healthcare (...) service. (shrink)

: This paper examines the obligations of pharmacy licensees and pharmacists in the context of conscience-based objections to filling lawful prescriptions for certain types of medications—e.g., standard and emergency contraceptives. Claims of conscience are analyzed as means to preserve or maintain an individual's moral integrity. It is argued that pharmacy licensees have an obligation to dispense prescription medications that satisfy the health needs of the populations they serve, and this obligation can override claims of conscience. Although efforts should be made (...) to respect the moral integrity of pharmacists and accommodate their claims of conscience, it is argued that the health needs of patients and the professional obligations of pharmacists limit the extent to which pharmacists may refuse to assist patients who have lawful prescriptions for medically indicated drugs. (shrink)

In a provocative 1974 article entitled “Harvesting the Dead,” Willard Gaylin explored potential uses of “neomorts,” or what are currently referred to as “heart-beating cadavers”—that is, humans determined to be dead by neurological criteria and whose cardiopulmonary function is medically maintained by ventilators, vasopressors, and so forth. Medical research was one of the potential uses Gaylin identified. He pointed out that tests of drugs and medical procedures that would have unacceptable health risks if performed on living human subjects could be (...) performed on neomorts without any health risks. According to Gaylin, the potential benefits of such research could be enormous, including not subjecting patients to ineffective or harmful medical procedures and eliminating delays in providing effective therapies to dying patients. (shrink)

: This paper examines informed consent in relation to research involving the newly dead. Reasons are presented for facilitating advance decision making in relation to postmortem research, and it is argued that the informed consent of family members should be sought when the deceased have not made a premortem decision. Regardless of whether the dead can be harmed, there are two important respects in which family consent can serve to protect the dead: (1) protecting the deceased's body from being used (...) for research that is incompatible with the person's premortem preferences and values and (2) protecting the deceased's body from being subject to disrespectful treatment. These claims are explained and justified, and several objections are critically examined. Additional reasons for securing family consent are presented including to protect them from additional emotional distress, to respect their wishes about wanting to have a say, and to maintain public trust in the medical profession and medical research. The paper also examines the scope of disclosure in relation to postmortem research. (shrink)

This special issue of HEC Forum includes articles on a wide range of specific topics that make significant contributions to conscientious objection scholarship. In this commentary, it is not feasible to provide a comprehensive analysis of each of the articles; and I have not attempted to do so. Instead, for each article, I have selected specific issues and arguments on which to comment.

Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 204-207.

Physicians are expected to engage patients as partners in identifying the possible benefits and harms associated with treatment options and selecting from among medically appropriate treatment options, rather than simply dictating what treatments patients will and will not receive. This collaborative model reflects the recognition that citizens in multicultural societies have diverse values and are likely to have different views about whether the possible benefits of a medical intervention outweigh the possible harms. However, there are circumstances in which the collaborative (...) process breaks down due to irresolvable disagreement. Especially challenging are cases in which patients are expected to die if they do not receive a treatment and either the patients or their surrogates insist on the treatment despite the physician's belief that providing it is ill advised. The source of disagreement is often differing appraisals of the risks and potential benefits. In such cases, physicians generally judge that there is insufficient likelihood or magnitude of benefit to justify the burdens or expense of treatment, while patients or surrogates believe that the small chance of preventing the patient's death is sufficient to justify the costs and potential burdens to the patient.There is a perception that surgeons enjoy considerable discretion in deciding when the risks of a procedure outweigh the expected benefits. An important contrast can be drawn between surgeons and intensivists—physicians who specialize in the medical management of critically ill patients. We will argue that there are good reasons for subjecting the decisions of both surgeons and intensivists to some oversight. We begin by showing that, for many cases, major professional society guidelines for intensivists recommend oversight via a procedural mechanism rather than unilateral decision‐making by individual clinicians. Next, we present reasons for adopting a procedural approach to dispute resolution, and we argue that these reasons apply to situations in which intensivists believe that patients or surrogates are requesting inappropriate life support as well as to many disagreements between surgeons and surrogates. Finally, we present and respond to several objections. (shrink)

In “Disentangling Conscience Protections,” in this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Nadia Sawicki offers a taxonomy of conscience protection laws (conscience clauses) that highlights the expansive protections they can offer to health professionals who refuse to provide a medical service for reasons of conscience. Conscience clauses can protect health professionals from adverse actions by public actors (such as administrative agencies, prosecutors, and government funders) or private actors (such as employers, private professional associations, and injured patients), and they can also (...) protect health professionals from being subject to adverse actions for their beliefs, their conduct, or harm that results from their conduct. This taxonomy provides an accurate description of the broad range of protections conscience clauses can offer and thereby is a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on conscientious objection in health care. But it remains to consider whether the distinctions Sawicki identifies disentangle conscience protections beyond merely providing a taxonomy. In particular, does the taxonomy identify relevant distinctions in relation to determining whether a conscience clause is justified? (shrink)

Hospitals sometimes refuse to provide goods and services or honor patients’ decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment for reasons that appear to resemble appeals to conscience. For example, based on the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services , Catholic hospitals have refused to forgo medically provided nutrition and hydration , and Catholic hospitals have refused to provide emergency contraception and perform abortions or sterilization procedures. I consider whether it is justified to refuse to offer EC to victims of (...) sexual assault who present at the emergency department . A preliminary question, however, is whether a hospital’s refusal to provide services can be conceptualized as conscience based. (shrink)

: Research involving the dead, especially heart-beating cadavers, may facilitate the testing of potentially revolutionary and life-saving medical treatments. However, to ensure that such research is conducted ethically, it is essential to: (1) identify appropriate standards for this research and (2) assign institutional responsibility and a mechanism for oversight. Protocols for research involving the dead should be reviewed by a special committee and assessed according to nine standards intended to ensure scientific merit, to protect deceased patients and their families, and (...) to promote institutional integrity and responsibility. Federal regulation of research involving the dead will foster appropriate standards and, equally importantly, help establish the acceptability of such research. (shrink)

Just as physicians can object to providing services due to their ethical and/or religious beliefs, medical students can have conscience-based objections to participating in educational activities. In 1996, the Medical Student Section of the American Medical Association introduced a resolution calling on the AMA to adopt a policy in support of exemptions for students with ethical or religious objections. In that report, students identified abortion, sterilization, and procedures performed on animals as examples of activities that might prompt requests for conscience-based (...) exemptions. In response to the student initiative, the Council on Medical Education recommended the adoption of seven “principles to guide exemption of medical students from activities based on conscience.” The House of Delegates adopted these principles in their entirety. (shrink)

Death in the Clinic fills a gap in contemporary medical education by explicitly addressing the concrete clinical realities about death with which practitioners, patients, and their families continue to wrestle. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Conscience clauses typically protect health care providers who cannot in good conscience provide a legal, professionally accepted, and clinically appropriate medical service (negative appeals to co...

What is conscientious objection? -- Should conscientious objectors be accommodated? -- Assessing objectors' beliefs and reasons -- Accommodation and conscientious provision.

Historically, conscientious objection has been associated with military service. Currently, however, it does not occur exclusively in response to compulsory military service. With increasing frequency, health care professionals, including those who practice in institutional settings such as hospitals and long-term care facilities, conscientiously object to providing specific medical services. This chapter provides a framework for managing conscientious objection within institutional settings. Criteria are provided for determining when refusals to provide medical services are conscientious objections. Reasons are offered for accommodating conscientious (...) objectors and for denying or limiting accommodation. A reasonable accommodation approach, which consists in five requirements, is explained and defended: (1) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s/surrogate’s timely access to information, counseling, and referral. (2) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient’s timely access to health care services offered within the institution. (3) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if the accommodation will not impose excessive burdens on other clinicians, supervisors, department heads, or the institution. (4) Whenever feasible, health professionals should provide advance notification to department heads or supervisors. (5) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if it will not enable invidious discrimination. (shrink)

In this issue of CQ, we are pleased to inaugurate a new Department, Professionalism, with an article by Jeffrey Blustein entitled “When Doctors Break the Rules: On the Ethics of Physician Noncompliance.” The article examines the ethical dilemmas physicians face when they believe that promoting the best interests of patients requires them to break one or more institutional rules.