Conscientious commitment is the provision of necessary or beneficial health care to patients in need despite stigma, unjust laws, or oppressive systems. While the exercise of so-called “conscientious objection” denies care that the patient has requested, conscientious commitment provides it.
In other words, conscientious commitment upholds medical ethics and the rights of patients, while “conscientious objection” violates these fundamental values. They are completely opposite to each other. Being conscientiously committed means giving priority to patient care over adherence to conservative religious doctrines or personal self-interest. It also means that healthcare providers are inspired to overcome barriers to delivery of reproductive services to protect and advance women’s health. For example, a doctor may decide to do an abortion to save a woman’s life even though abortion is illegal in their country. A variant of conscientious commitment that also upholds medical ethics and the best interests of patients would be the refusal to provide harmful or morally questionable “treatments” without genuine patient consent, including torture, executions, infant circumcision, or other non-beneficent care (for example, a risky experimental treatment or unnecessary amputation).
Some people may equate conscientious commitment with “conscientious objection” because of the confusion between the two similar terms, but the latter is a misnomer that is unrelated to the true practice of conscientious objection in the military.
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Conscientious refusal or conscientious provision: We can’t have both
Ryan Kulesa, Alberto Giubilini https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13285 Abstract Some authors argue that it is permissible for clinicians to conscientiously provide abortion services because clinicians are already allowed to conscientiously refuse to provide certain services. Call this the symmetry thesis. We argue that on either of the two main understandings of the aim of the medical profession—what we will call “pathocentric” and “interest-centric” […]
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The Moral Asymmetry of Conscientious Provision and Conscientious Refusal: Insights from Oppression and Allyship
by Richard Matthews Abstract: Conscientious refusal involves decisions by healthcare workers, on grounds of their conscience, to refuse to provide legal, professionally permissible and safe health interventions to patients. Conscientious provision involves decisions by healthcare workers, also on grounds of conscience, to provide safe and beneficial healthcare to patients that is prohibited by law or […]
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Conscientious commitment, professional obligations and abortion provision after the reversal of Roe v Wade
by Alberto Giubilini, Udo Schuklenk, Francesca Minerva, Julian Savulescu Abstract We argue that, in certain circumstances, doctors might be professionally justified to provide abortions even in those jurisdictions where abortion is illegal. That it is at least professionally permissible does not mean that they have an all-things-considered ethical justification or obligation to provide illegal abortions or that […]
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Conscientious Commitment to Women’s Health
May 2011. By Rebecca J. Cook and Bernard Dickens. Abstract Conscientious commitment, the reverse of conscientious objection, inspires healthcare providers to overcome barriers to delivery of reproductive services to protect and advance women’s health. History shows social reformers suffering religious condemnation and imprisonment to promote means of birth control, until access became popularly accepted. Voluntary […]
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Conscentious Commitment to Women’s Health
by Bernard Dickens 12 April 2008, Lancet In some regions of the world, hospital policy, negotiated with the health ministry and police, requires that a doctor who finds evidence of an unskilled abortion or abortion attempt should immediately inform police authorities and preserve the evidence. Elsewhere, religious leaders forbid male doctors from examining any part […]