It was 1979. A professor of obstetrics was threatening a young University of Toronto medical student who had refused to offer the expected answer to an exam question about abortion. Instead, he had stated his opposition to the procedure.
The confrontation resulted from demands that health care workers do what they believed to be wrong. The demands first arose in relation to abortion and contraception. The last decades of the twentieth century saw nurses, physicians, pharmacists and others denied employment or forced to resign because of their objections to these procedures [Repression of Conscience].
In the first years of the new millennium, conflicts intensified. Activists demanded new 'rights' to abortion, contraception and artificial reproduction, and even portrayed conscientious objection by health care workers as crimes against humanity. Similar controversies are developing in other areas of practice. Influential academics and professionals have begun to suggest that physicians who object to euthanasia are, nonetheless, obliged to refer patients for the service [Mandatory Referral]. More and more often comes the ultimatum: "Do what you're told, or get another job."Since 1999 the Protection of Conscience Project has been working to ensure that people are not forced to facilitate practices or procedures to which they object for reasons of conscience: abortion, capital punishment, contraception, sterilization, artificial reproduction, euthanasia, assisted suicide, human experimentation, torture, etc.
The Project website is a resource for people concerned about the exercise of freedom of conscience in health care.
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