Conscientious Objection

An Obama misstep?

Michael Cook | 11 February 2012

Has President Obama made a major political miscalculation at the beginning of an election year? He has announced that his administration will force employer-provided private health-care plans to cover contraception -- even if they are conscientiously opposed to contraception.

No conscience exemption for contraceptive coverage, says Obama Administration

Michael Cook | 28 January 2012

Church-affiliated institutions must cover free contraception for their employees, the Obama administration has announced. As a concession to outraged religious groups,

New Jersey nurses allege religious discrimination over abortion

Jared Yee | 03 December 2011

Twelve New Jersey nurses have charged a hospital with religious discrimination after it announced it would introduce a policy that would require them to help patients before and after abortions. In a lawsuit filed at the end of October, the nurses charge that the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey breached state and federal law with its new abortion policy. This removed an exemption on moral or religious grounds.

Michael Jackson’s doctor gets four years in jail

Michael Cook | 02 December 2011

The personal physician to deceased pop star Michael Jackson has been sentenced to four years imprisonment for involuntary manslaughter. Jackson died in 2009 from an overdose of inappropriate medication for an inability to sleep.

Oxford ethicist attacks conscientious objection

Michael Cook | 25 November 2011

Conscientious objection is guaranteed to give anyone who went to university in the 60s and 70s the warm fuzzies. It was the Everest of moral heroism. But times change. A recent debate in the Medical Journal of Australia features Oxford professor of ethics Julian Savulescu arguing that conscientious objection “is grounded in a dangerous moral relativism” and has no place in modern medicine.

Doctors want right to refuse patients: study

Jared Yee | 22 July 2011

The next generation of British doctors believe it should have the right to refuse to treat certain patients based on personal, moral and religious beliefs.

No easy answer to conscientious refusal to refer, says ethicist

Michael Cook | 18 June 2011

Doctors who are unwilling either to supply a legal service or refer to a willing doctor should be disciplined or get out of medicine altogether, a number of leading bioethicists have argued. But it’s not as simple as that, according to an article in the latest Journal of Medical Ethics.