Abstract

The past decade has seen a vigorous debate in medical ethics over whether and under what conditions physicians can refuse requests from patients for medical interventions that the physician believes are morally inappropriate to perform. The debate has typically been framed in terms of "conscientious refusal": when, if ever, is the physician justified in refusing an intervention when the reasons of refusal have to do with the convictions of the physician's conscience? To this version of the question, a range of answers have been given. At one extreme, scholars have argued for the so-called incompatibility thesis, that conscientious objection is a matter of personal morality and hence incompatible with the...