Conscientious Objection: the Religious Right's latest weapon in the culture wars

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Health care professionals demanding accommodation for their conscience based objection to particular professional services have become the latest weapon deployed in the religious right's culture wars.

This talk describes how this came about and how it impacts on patients' access to a variety of contested health care services. I will then give a brief account of the history of conscientious objection and explain why today's conscientious objectors are very different in kind to their historical predecessors. In the second half of the talk I will discuss ethical arguments for and against the accommodation of conscientious objectors in health care delivery. I will defend the conclusion that conscientious objection accommodation demands are by necessity always instances where health care professionals act unprofessionally. Societies have no sound reason to accommodate them.

Bio: Udo Schuklenk is the Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics and Public Policy at Queen's University at Kingston, and a Professor of Philosophy. He has been the Editor in Chief of Bioethics, the official journal of the International Association of Bioethics, for the last two decades. He's an author or editor of books on matters atheism, bioethics, and health policy.