Should Doctors Have the Right to Say No to Abortion?
We hear from some, such as Dr. Sherwin Nuland, that what a doctor does or does not do at the bedside should be determined by the individual practioner's personal conscience. This usually cuts from the side of permitting acts such as euthanasia--as Nuland asserted in the New England Journal of Medicine--and to justify futile care theory.
On the flip side, some have said that pharmacists should be able to refuse to fill a prescription for contraception and RU 486. Along this line, there is a growing revolt among doctors in the UK about performing abortions. From the story in the Daily Mail:
Rising numbers of doctors are refusing to carry out abortions, leading to a crisis in NHS provision. The stance by staff, taken on ethical grounds, has led to a doubling of abortions carried out by private clinics, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
The swell of medical staff joining the unprecedented moral revolt means that there may soon not be enough doctors to carry out sufficient terminations to meet the public demand...
If this spreads to the USA, expect a huge battle with some advocating that doctors be required to perform abortions or not practice medicine--or at least ob/gyn--which I believe is already proposed in New York. Others will promote professional "choice" in all aspects of care, from assisted suicide to acceding to the requests of "amputee wannabes."James Gerrard, a GP in Leeds, said: "Out of the six doctors in our practice, three of us object to abortion. I had made up my mind on abortion before entering the medical profession. I feel the foetus is a person and killing that foetus is wrong."...
Staff at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in North London is introducing a code of ethics for its resident GPs and other staff. Anyone working there will not be able to offer any service which conflicts with Catholic teaching on the value of human life or sexual ethics.
In a morally polyglot society, it is hard to know what the right answer is. As for my opinion, if a medical procedure is legal--it is legal. At the same time, I support conscience refusals so long as notice is given to patients in advance--unless doing so would endanger life (as in an ectopic pregnancy) or lead to serious health risks for the patient. What say y'all?
Labels: Conscience Clauses
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 3:01 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
There's an easy win-win solution here. Develop an artificial womb. That way, women wouldn't need to be pregnant if they don't want to be, and the embryo/fetus could be "grown" safely. In time, we may even find out what causes miscarriages and prevent them.
Tony-- you ever read that test they did on monkeys with the three mothers? Been a while, but basically there was "feeding, that's it" there was the burlap mother and there was the "raise lovingly by humans" mother. The first group was basically ruined, the second was socially horrible, and the third was almost normal.
I'd really rather we didn't find out what a baby that DOESN'T hang out under a beating heart, working lungs, glugging stomach and rumbling voice turns out as....
There's a huge difference between nurturing before birth, and nurturing done after birth. The latter is more important, and the latter was what was done in the study you mentioned.
You shouldn't compare apples with oranges.
Wesley asked a serious question and I'll give him a serious answer.
No, doctors should not be forced to perform abortions.
But yes, doctors and pharmacists should fill contraceptives, including birth control.
What's the line? The level of invasion and work required.
Abortions are highly invasive and even if relatively simple, they require a lot more work than filling out prescriptions. The latter of which doctors regularly do anyway. Thus, we're not really requiring the doctor do anything they aren't already doing. So, to put a moral veto on routine work is a per se violation of patient trust.
Relatedly, I haven't heard a coherent rationale of where we draw the line for medical people of minority religions objecting to performing out of their religious belief. Where do we draw the line? What if the doctor objected to blood transfusions like some religions do? Personally, I would ask - "why the f--k did you go to medical school?"
Largely, I have very little sympathy for people placed in such awkward positions.
Being a nuanced view, I'm sure this will piss off extremists on both sides.
It would seem to me that if the procedure does no harm, in a strictly medical or scientific sense, then the doctor should do it. That is, if your only objection to performing a blood transfusion is that the Bible tells you not to, then (as Royale says) you have no business being a doctor. I suppose that one might argue that the possibility of the pill having an abortifacient effect violates the dictum that you ought not do harm. So where one construes harm rather depends on one's philosophical stance.
I think the ethical rule of the double effect applies here: is harm the intended effect, or a secondary consequence?
Like pharmacists refusing to fill birth-control prescriptions, Doctors do not have to perform any surgery that they don't like.
On the other hand, pharmacies and private hospitals have the right not to employ such individuals.
This is another example of why private health care is preferable to a public system, especially when there are laws which allow morally ambiguous procedures rather than prevent them.
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