A leading Catholic theologian has hit out at the Medical Council’s Guidelines on Conscientious Objection which he describes as making “a mockery of the notion of conscientious objection”. Writing in this month’s editorial of The Word magazine about the Crisis Pregnancy Agency and abortion referral, Fr D. Vincent Twomey SVD tackles the Medical Council’s Guideline (2.6) which states: “If a doctor has a conscientious objection to a course of action, this should be explained and the names of other doctors made available to the patient”.
Fr Twomey, a former professor of moral theology in Maynooth, writes, “If a doctor refuses a course of action on the grounds that he or she holds it to be immoral, then he (she) cannot in good conscience recommend that the patient go to a doctor who would comply with their wishes.” He adds, “Referral is co-operation in an immoral act and the referring physician ultimately helps to achieve the immoral end.”
Acknowledging that this directive by the Medical Council is under revision, Fr Twomey states that there is still time to alter it so that the part of the directive which stipulates about making the names of other doctors available and forcing Catholic doctors to co-operate in immoral actions is deleted.
Otherwise the Catholic doctor could be “disciplined by the Medical Council for professional misconduct and ultimately lose the right to practice medicine in Ireland if he (she) continues to follow his (her) conscience.”
The theologian also highlights in his editorial the pressure which the statutory body, the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) placed on the Catholic counselling agency, CURA, to distribute the CPA’s ‘Positive Options’ leaflet which included information on agencies providing information on abortion referral, and the CPA’s attempt to pressurise CURA into referring clients to those services willing to give abortion information. “Every abortion leaves two victims, one dead, the other seriously injured.” He adds, “To refer the patient would be to cooperate in the anticipated immoral action.”
Warning that “freedom of conscience is one of the most fundamental human rights” and that it forms the basis of democracy and of civilised living, the Editor in Chief of The Word writes that it is today “under threat once again on various fronts, not least due to the tendency of modern governments to become totalitarian – i.e. to decide how we should behave in very possible situation”.
He concludes: “At a time when corruption in all institutions of our society is increasing, the only bulwark against the rising tide is a person’s conscience and the respect society shows their conscience, even if they happen to be swimming against the prevailing politically correct tide.”
“If we don’t uphold the primacy of conscience in all aspects of political and civil society, then we are left with the lame excuse that, in recent times, many people found guilty of shady practices in, for example, business and banking, excuse themselves by – claiming ‘everyone else was/is doing it’. We would do well to recall the words of the late John Paul II: ‘Freedom consists not in doing what one wants, but in having the freedom to do what one ought to do.’”
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