We’re told that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps that’s true; certainly some things depend on your perspective. But it’s odd to see a fundamental human right put in that category.
Last month, the Ministry of Health released a review of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act expressing concern about conscientious objection. “Failure to reduce the impact of conscientious objection on abortion service provision contributes towards the overall inequity in accessing abortion services around the country”, says the Ministry. It also recommends that hospitals “manage” doctors’ conscientious objection so that this right “does not impede timely and equitable access to post-20 week abortion health care.”
Switch from abortion to euthanasia, and Ann David, President of the End of Life Choice Society, has gone even further. In an article in The Listener earlier this year, she alleges that multiple patients seeking an assisted death have been deliberately obstructed and their wishes frustrated. How has this apparently happened?
Doctors, she says, can “make it difficult” for these patients by “providing only the minimum information that the [law] requires.” The provision she’s referring to is section 9 of the End of Life Choice Act 2019, which says that an attending doctor must tell the patient that they have a conscientious objection and that the patient has a “right to ask the SCENZ Group for the name and contact details of a replacement medical practitioner.”
It requires some strained reasoning to equate legal compliance with “deliberately obstructing” patients. It’s even more of a stretch when you consider the purpose that informs that provision.
Legal protections for conscience start from the recognition that no-one should be required to act against their most important beliefs. As medical ethicists point out, these beliefs are integral to a person’s sense of identity, so integral that violating them causes moral injury. Conscience is also protected, they say, because it is a precondition of good medical practice; it reflects the reality that doctors are not mere service providers but skilled professionals who exercise reasoned moral judgment about complex situations.
That’s why freedom of conscience is correctly treated as a fundamental human right, protected by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.
Despite this, the emerging attitude of activists and officials treats conscience rights as an impediment to “consumers” accessing a “service”. In its review of the End of Life Choice Act, the Ministry was open about its position “that the balance of rights should favour the rights of consumers accessing healthcare, including assisted dying services.”
Ironically, in the name of patient choice and consumer rights, this attitude denigrates doctors’ choice and their rights.
Patients facing the end of their lives or considering an abortion may be vulnerable and should always be treated with respect and compassion, no matter what beliefs a health practitioner has. But it should be possible to hold this commitment alongside an equal commitment to respect conscience rights.
From the vantage point of the activists and officials, those rights are apparently expendable. But unlike beauty, the importance of human rights is not in the beholder’s eye. Seen correctly, freedom of conscience is not an obstruction, but a right that protects choices we should value and respect.
