Legalizing euthanasia/assisted suicide, abortion, and transgender interventions for dysphoric children is only the beginning of the ongoing destruction of Hippocratic moral values in medicine. Once such interventions are legal, activists next insist that they become readily available.
But many (and I hope most) doctors want nothing to do with causing death or interfering with the normal functioning of healthy bodies. Indeed, many assisted suicide, abortion, and gender ideologues complain that too few doctors willingly participate in these procedures, as is sometimes protected by the law.
These “medical conscience” rights inhibit the increasing hegemony of utilitarian medical values in health care. As a result, once life-taking or mutilating procedures become legal, efforts soon begin to conscript unwilling medical professionals into performing them — both to ensure ready access and to send the cultural message that such actions are right and good.
The movement to quash medical conscience has been ongoing for many years, led by famous mainstream bioethicists such as Ezekiel Emanuel. It is also becoming a partisan issue as influential elements of the Democratic Party oppose medical conscience.
Now, the internationally influential bioethics professor Julian Savulescu has also weighed in to advocate a professional standard of care that would force doctors to take human life by forcing them to participate in assisted suicide and abortion:
After researching use of conscientious objection by health professionals, I have concluded it is seriously flawed when used to deny patients health services. This is especially so when particular doctors have a monopoly on service provision, as is the case with abortion and assisted dying in many rural and regional areas of Australia. . . .
Health-care professionals are not like pacifists refusing conscription into the military, opposing something forced upon them. They freely choose health-care careers that come with obligations and with ethical stances already established by professional codes of conduct.
People are free to hold whatever beliefs they choose, but those beliefs will inevitably close off some options for them. For example, a vegetarian will not be able to work in an abattoir. That is true for every one of us. But what shouldn’t happen is a doctor’s personal beliefs closing off legitimate options for their patient.
Do you see the goal? The plan is to kick pro-life and/or Hippocratic Oath-believing medical professionals out of medicine and deprofessionalize the sector, turning doctors into so many technocratic order takers. Lest you think that is an exaggeration, in Ontario, Canada, doctors can already be forced to kill patients qualified for euthanasia or find another doctor they know will do the deed. In British Columbia a hospice was defunded because it refused to participate in euthanasia.
Talk about unwise! If the law or professional ethics force, say, oncologists to commit assisted suicide, that will lead to a devastating brain drain of oncologists retiring or shifting to another area of practice. Concomitantly, destroying conscience will inhibit talented people with particular moral or religious beliefs from entering medical and nursing schools. Ditto forcing OB/GYNs to do abortions. And think of the future endocrinologists who will refuse to so specialize if they know that they will not only be expected to treat abnormal maturation but cause it with puberty blockers.
No. Comity is required to maintain a dynamic medical system, not coercion. Here are some principles I think should apply to this controversy:
As more states legalize assisted suicide and abortion through the ninth month, the medical conscience issue is again bubbling to the surface. But just because a medical procedure is legal, that doesn’t mean it is morally right. Honoring medical conscience allows patients to obtain such interventions from willing doctors, while also permitting dissenting medical professionals to stay true to their own beliefs/faith and continue to serve patients and society.