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Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration
BACKGROUND: In the debate on conscientious objection in healthcare, proponents of conscience rights often point to the imperative to protect the health professional’s moral integrity. Their opponents hold that the moral integrity argument alone can at most justify accommodation of conscientious obje...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6194637/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30340579 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-018-0323-0 |
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author | Myskja, Bjørn K. Magelssen, Morten |
author_facet | Myskja, Bjørn K. Magelssen, Morten |
author_sort | Myskja, Bjørn K. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: In the debate on conscientious objection in healthcare, proponents of conscience rights often point to the imperative to protect the health professional’s moral integrity. Their opponents hold that the moral integrity argument alone can at most justify accommodation of conscientious objectors as a “moral courtesy”, as the argument is insufficient to establish a general moral right to accommodation, let alone a legal right. MAIN TEXT: This text draws on political philosophy in order to argue for a legal right to accommodation. The moral integrity arguments should be supplemented by the requirement to protect minority rights in liberal democracies. Citizens have a right to live in accordance with their fundamental moral convictions, and a right to equal access to employment. However, this right should not be unconditional, as that would unduly infringe on the rights of other citizens. The right must be limited to cases where the moral basis is more fundamental in a sense that all reasonable citizens in a liberal democracy should accept, such as the constitutive role of the inviolability of human life in liberal democracies. CONCLUSION: There should be a legal, yet circumscribed, right to accommodation for conscientious objectors refusing to provide healthcare services that they reasonably consider to involve the intentional killing of a human being. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6194637 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-61946372018-10-25 Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration Myskja, Bjørn K. Magelssen, Morten BMC Med Ethics Debate BACKGROUND: In the debate on conscientious objection in healthcare, proponents of conscience rights often point to the imperative to protect the health professional’s moral integrity. Their opponents hold that the moral integrity argument alone can at most justify accommodation of conscientious objectors as a “moral courtesy”, as the argument is insufficient to establish a general moral right to accommodation, let alone a legal right. MAIN TEXT: This text draws on political philosophy in order to argue for a legal right to accommodation. The moral integrity arguments should be supplemented by the requirement to protect minority rights in liberal democracies. Citizens have a right to live in accordance with their fundamental moral convictions, and a right to equal access to employment. However, this right should not be unconditional, as that would unduly infringe on the rights of other citizens. The right must be limited to cases where the moral basis is more fundamental in a sense that all reasonable citizens in a liberal democracy should accept, such as the constitutive role of the inviolability of human life in liberal democracies. CONCLUSION: There should be a legal, yet circumscribed, right to accommodation for conscientious objectors refusing to provide healthcare services that they reasonably consider to involve the intentional killing of a human being. BioMed Central 2018-10-19 /pmc/articles/PMC6194637/ /pubmed/30340579 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-018-0323-0 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Debate Myskja, Bjørn K. Magelssen, Morten Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration |
title | Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration |
title_full | Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration |
title_fullStr | Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration |
title_full_unstemmed | Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration |
title_short | Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration |
title_sort | conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration |
topic | Debate |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6194637/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30340579 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-018-0323-0 |
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