New South Wales doctors and nurses who have a conscientious objection to participating in abortions or voluntary assisted dying are under threat, Liberal MLC Susan Carter has told a gathering of doctors and lawyers. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
She said she has detected hostility towards conscientious objection and a growing endorsement of “authoritarian majoritarianism” among her constituents and her colleagues in Parliament.
“Anyone who would stand in the way of health care – for example by declining, on conscience grounds, to participate in a surgical abortion – must be an obstruction to be removed by any effective health system, rather than a practitioner with a strong ethical compass who should be supported,” she said.
“And this is the language we hear from health bureaucrats all the time.”
Addressing members of the St Thomas More Society and the NSW Catholic Medical Association, Ms Carter said that both in theory and in practice, conscientious objection for healthcare workers is at risk in the state’s healthcare system.
Greens MLC Dr Amanda Cohn, for instance, once told Parliament in connection with abortion that “conscientious objection must not be weaponised to restrict access to care by whole departments or institutions”.
And last year, the chief exeuctive of Murrumbidgee Health District told the budget estimates committee that they would prefer to employ people in key roles based on their views on whether or not they object to abortion.
Where does this leave people who believe that abortion and VAD are unethical? On very shaky ground, Ms Carter warned.
“Doctors with a conscientious objection are obstacles to be designed around – and employment conditions structured in such a way that they are unemployable,” she said.
“From a purely administrative perspective, this is understandable. From a view of conscience as representing a perceived majoritarian view this makes perfect sense. But from any other understanding of conscience? It is denial of a conscience right.”
A novel idea for protecting conscience rights emerged from Ms Carter’s talk – treating conscientious objection as a workplace safety issue. Being forced to violate one’s conscience could cause “moral injury”.
“Moral injury raises the possibility that the underlying moral nature of traumatic and significant events can lead to lasting psychological, biological, spiritual, behavioural and social impacts,” Ms Carter explained. It could be “an OH&S risk which employers have a legal obligation to avoid.”
FULL STORY
Conscientious objection for healthcare workers endangered in NSW (By Michael Cook, The Catholic Weekly)
