Conscientious Objection

Delivering Care Based on Conscience and Compassion

Commentary in the National Catholic Register September 2, 2021

People with diverging views still need each other to handle contentious medical issues, for example, about the dying process and the difficulties of unwanted pregnancies. It’s tempting for disagreement to breed contempt rather than foster the mutual understanding that religious freedom supports.

Progressives dislike condemnations of surrogacy, abortion, euthanasia and transgender surgery, and the refusal to provide or fund them. They judge these practices to be necessary options for every human being and view opposition to them as deleterious to society. 

Those opposed, who are often religious, dislike being accused of discrimination. Their consciences, often informed by religious traditions, judge those practices to be always harmful, both to providers and patients, and they oppose them as a means to advance the common good. Their views, thus, are not discriminatory and do not deserve legal attack.

The Way Of The Gospel, Health Care, And Religious Freedom

Public Justice Review, v. 3 2017, “Health and Human Flourishing”

Wide institutional pluralism and protections for religious freedom make it more likely that individuals will find others of similar conscience to test their seriously considered, conscientious judgments. It is also more likely that they will find rivals who challenge their vision of health care and morality. This dynamic seems particularly necessary in science and medicine. Medical technology offers more power and more options for modifying the body and for curing diseases in the human body and psyche. Yet the greater power draws into sharper relief both human limitations and fundamental human questions, especially regarding the meaning of suffering and the specific characteristics of human dignity.

The Public Argument of Conscientious Objection

First Things (online). January 27, 2010

The health care provider’s judgement of conscience is not only a personal statement but also argument that a particular act or practice fosters or undermines the common good. This two-fold thrust explains why conscientious objection is so intolerable to abortion advocates: It makes a public argument for the abolition of abortion and the discovery of alternatives, wherever possible. Conscientious objection generates public debate in which every side expects short-term compromises while complex questions are answered. Over the long run, however, it aims at the formation of a social conscience sufficient to reject certain medical practices as inherently immoral and unfit for the common good.

History offers encouraging as well as discouraging evidence for the formation of such a social conscience. Nevertheless, persons cannot morally “opt out” of expressing a conscience regarding the common good, whether or not their laws offer them protection in doing so.

Natural Law, Religious Liberty, and the 2012 Contraception Mandate

People dismiss the natural law but then come around to argue something like it. They intend that their arguments have force not because they say so, but because they are based on a moral order that others cannot deny. People ought to enjoy religious liberty because questions arise that demand true answers: Does God exist? How shall I understand myself? What shall I do for my neighbor? What shall we do together?

Seeking answers to these questions requires free inquiry into religious matters, the ability to organize with others to learn and discuss them, the ability to establish social institutions to show how religious beliefs are lived out and benefit society, the elimination of barriers to all the above and due regard for the public order.

Protecting religious freedom, then, requires civil authorities to identify the various ways in which their citizens are habitually forced to act contrary to their religious convictions while maintaining the public order.

As moral and political arguments move from general principles the ordering of society, expect controversy. Yet as Chief Justice Jackson observed: “we can from time to time discover these basic relationships which must be respected if we are to have an international order of peace and justice.”

Discovery and Revelation: The Consciences of Christians, Public Policy, and Bioethics Debate

Christian Bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 18, Issue 1, April 2012, Pages 41–58.

Health care begins as an act of conscience, which urges a response to the sick and holds caregivers accountable to moral standards that public authorities ultimately do not define. Conscience nonetheless expresses itself as a type of dialogue within oneself that is influenced by dialogue with others, especially with society in the form of civil law and professional standards. A well-formed conscience for health care relates the foundations of morality to health care practices and contributes sound moral judgment about them to the common good. Some current health care policies and medical education presume a distorted view of conscience as personal sentiment. These policies circumvent serious discussion and possible resolution of society's most vexing bioethics controversies.

Institutional Conscience and Catholic Health Care

Life and Learning XVI: Proceedings of the Sixteenth University Faculty for Life Conference (2006), 413-422.

Despite serious challenges to the identity of Catholic health institutions in the United States, both Church and society should continue to see them as privileged places of moral discernment. This discernment occurs in “institutional conscience,” namely, a dialogue among all those authorized to act on the institution’s behalf about institutional actions, for example, medical interventions. The institutional conscience of Catholic health institutions should be respected by society at large, leaving them free to practice Christian healing and to show the problems with certain practices that they eject, such as abortion, and to seek alternatives.