{"id":3004,"date":"2016-03-31T20:22:35","date_gmt":"2016-03-31T19:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2016-03-31T20:22:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-31T19:22:53","slug":"nurses-cannot-be-good-catholics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2016\/03\/31\/nurses-cannot-be-good-catholics\/","title":{"rendered":"Nurses Cannot be Good Catholics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by\u00a0John Olusegun Adenitire<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It seems that if you are a nurse you cannot be a good Catholic. \u00a0Or, better: if you want to work as a nurse then you might have to give up some of your religious beliefs. \u00a0A relatively recent decision of the UK Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, seems to suggest so. \u00a0In a legal decision that made it into the general press (see here<\/a><\/span>), the Supreme Court decided that two Catholic midwives could not refuse to undertake administrative and supervisory tasks connected to the provision of abortions.<\/p>\n

To be sure, no one asked the nurses to directly assist in the provision of abortions. \u00a0The Abortion Act 1967 says that \u201cNo person shall be under any duty … to participate in any treatment authorised by this Act to which he has a conscientious objection.\u201d \u00a0The Nurses argued that this provision of the Act should be understood widely. \u00a0Not only should they be allowed to refuse to directly assist in abortion services: they should also be entitled to refuse to undertake managerial and supervisory tasks if those were linked to abortion services. \u00a0The nurses\u2019 employer was not impressed; neither was the Supreme Court which ruled that the possibility to conscientiously object only related to a \u2018hands-on\u2019 capacity in the provision of abortion services.<\/p>\n

In a recent paper in the JME<\/em> (available here<\/a><\/span>) I have argued, albeit only indirectly, that this decision is only half-correct. \u00a0Nurses and other medical professionals have a human right to object to the provision of a wide range of services which they deem incompatible with their conscience. \u00a0I say that the decision of the Supreme Court is only half-correct because the Court explicitly avoided investigating the possibility of the nurses\u2019 human right to conscientious objection. \u00a0Under the Human Rights Act, individuals have a right to freedom of conscience and religion. \u00a0That right may, in appropriate circumstances, entail the right for nurses to object to being involved in administrative and supervisory duties connected with abortion services. \u00a0If you ask me how the Supreme Court avoided having to consider the nurses\u2019 human right to freedom of conscience and religion I couldn\u2019t tell you. \u00a0I bet neither could any of the Law Dons at Oxford.<\/p>\n

I realise that by appealing to human rights I am not necessarily making the nurses\u2019 case any more deserving of sympathy that it already is(n\u2019t). \u00a0The Human Rights Act is not a very popular piece of legislation. The tabloid newspaper The Sun<\/em> hates it:\u00a0see here<\/a><\/span>. \u00a0(If you read The Sun<\/em> other than for the comedy effect of the paper, then we probably can\u2019t be friends anyway.) \u00a0David Cameron\u2019s party is thinking of repealing the Human Rights Act:\u00a0see here<\/a><\/span>. (If you like David Cameron\u2019s party\u2026 we probably should not talk about politics.)\u00a0\u00a0But\u00a0despite the lack of popularity of the Human Rights Act, it confers legal rights that you have a right to enjoy. \u00a0And you should be able to enjoy those rights even if people think that you are a bigoted conservative Catholic nurse who should be fired on the spot for refusing to do her job. \u00a0You should be able to enjoy the rights conferred by the Human Rights Act even if The Sun<\/em> or David Cameron hate the Act. \u00a0That is the whole point of legal rights.<\/p>\n

In my JME<\/em> paper I do not spend much time criticising the Supreme Court for not doing its job properly. \u00a0I criticise instead the British Medical Association\u2019s policy<\/a><\/span> on the right for doctors to conscientiously object to providing medical services. \u00a0I argue that the policy document is inadequate because it does not properly consider the rights of doctors under the Human Rights Act. \u00a0I could have equally criticised the Nursing and Midwifery Council\u2019s policy<\/a><\/span> on conscientious objection for the same reason. \u00a0My intention was to show that the law on conscientious objection is complex and is influenced heavily by human rights considerations. \u00a0If you have to give advice to doctors or nurses on their right to conscientious objection you have to get the law (including human rights law) right. \u00a0My view is that neither the British Medical Association nor the Nursery Council have got it right. \u00a0Fortunately, I think the General Medical Council has<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

Let me conclude by saying that I don\u2019t think nurses should refuse to provide legal abortions because the Catholic Church tells them not to. \u00a0I am not a Catholic and I don\u2019t think anyone should be a Catholic. \u00a0But what I think people should or should not be is irrelevant when it comes to the matter of what they have a legal right to be. \u00a0Whether I like it or not, nurses have a human right to be good Catholics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read the full paper here<\/a><\/span>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by\u00a0John Olusegun Adenitire It seems that if you are a nurse you cannot be a good Catholic. \u00a0Or, better: if you want to work as a nurse then you might have to give up some of your religious beliefs. \u00a0A relatively recent decision of the UK Supreme Court, the highest court in the […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[968,1273,2153,2146,511,443,2148,591,328,475,2745,2022,576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinical-ethics","category-ethics-education","category-guest-post","category-in-the-courts","category-in-the-news","category-jme","category-law","category-life-and-death","category-philosophy","category-politics","category-professionalism","category-reproduction","category-the-art-of-medicine"],"yoast_head":"\nNurses Cannot be Good Catholics - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2016\/03\/31\/nurses-cannot-be-good-catholics\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nurses Cannot be Good Catholics - 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