The right to object
At a time when apartheid made its last stand in the late 1980s, increasing numbers of young white men refused to be conscripted into the South African Defence Force on grounds of their conscientious objection to an ideology which the army vowed to defend. Some of these men were imprisoned for their principled stand.
The present government, composed mostly of erstwhile opponents of apartheid, has enshrined the right to conscientious objection in the Constitution.
Alas, it seems that this constitutional protection is not being applied in some state hospitals where medical staff are victimised for refusing to participate in abortions.
The bishops of Southern Africa noted this last month when they made a representation to a parliamentary sub-committee on the now adopted amendment to the Choice of Termination of Pregnancy Act.
At the time, they said: “We are…concerned about incidents involving medical staff and doctors whose freedom of conscience has been questioned. In addition to this, there have been instances where doctors and nurses have been discriminated against because of their opposition to abortion. Their experiences range from being made uncomfortable in the workplace, to being moved to different departments, and even being denied promotions.”
One such case, that of Sister Wilhelmien Charles, has culminated in legal action being taken against a Vereeniging hospital and the minister of health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. Elsewhere in this newspaper, a doctor who worked at the same hospital tells of the victimisation he experienced as a result of his opposition to abortion.
Pro-life doctors adopt the view that abortion violates not only the Fifth Commandment, but also the Hippocratic oath. That oath, formulated 2500 years ago, comes down to one primary instruction: Do no harm. The pro-life position is that abortion (as well as euthanasia or embryonic stem cell research) does profound harm by destroying life.
Life ethics is a sensitive domain. A utilitarian society which does not regard all life as sacred will have difficulty understanding pro-life concerns (and vice versa, hence the prevalent mutual suspicion and embittered intractability).
Indeed, to those who regard life as less than sacred, the case for abortion, euthanasia and even embryonic stem cell therapy (for which there is a more suitable alternative in adult stem cells) will seem persuasive, even compelling.
Many Catholics working in any field of medicine–doctors, nurses, pharmacists–must do battle with their conscience every day. Catholic pharmacists, for example, are faced with ethical dilemmas where they are called on to sell artificial contraceptives (even of the abortifacient type), the Church’s condemnation of such medications notwithstanding.
Catholic doctors and nurses working in state hospitals that provide abortion facilities face an even greater predicament: not only would they compromise their personal ethics by participating in an abortion, but they would also face the threat of automatic excommunication if they do.
Hospital management, on the other hand, takes the view that pro-life staff are obstructive in the efficient provision of a service their facilities are mandated to render.
Therein lies the tension–and it is not resolved by duplicitous manoeuvres to marginalise pro-life staff.
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