Irish Times, March 11th 2008
Doctors 'may lose jobs' over ethics
By PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent
DOCTORS IN Ireland who follow their conscience could lose their right to practise medicine, a prominent Catholic theologian has claimed.
He also said that doctors who refused to co-operate "in immoral actions according to Catholic medical ethics can be disciplined by the Medical Council for professional misconduct and ultimately lose the right to practise medicine in Ireland if he continues to follow his conscience."
Fr Vincent Twomey, former professor of moral theology at Maynooth, said that to expect Catholic doctors with conscientious objections to a course of action to refer patients to doctors with no such objections is to make "a mockery of the notion of conscientious objection".
Writing an editorial in the current edition of The Word magazine, he noted that the Medical Council of Ireland's guidelines concerning conscientious objection stated that "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".
He took this to mean that "that the doctor should give the names of other doctors who would supply the 'treatment' which, on conscientious grounds, the first doctor could not prescribe.
"But this is a mockery of the notion of conscientious objection."
He said that "referral is co-operation in an immoral act and the referring physician ultimately helps to achieve the immoral end."
Today it seemed many GPs and obstetricians in Ireland prescribed the morning after pill, even though this was in conflict with Catholic medical ethics, he said.
DOCTORS AND CONSCIENCE Irish Times Letters Page March 13th 2008
Madam, - Your religious affairs correspondent reports (March 11th) on an article in The Word magazine by Fr Vincent Twomey suggesting that a conscientious objection by a doctor to providing particular medical services logically extends to providing information about alternative sources. This is impossible to accept.
A patient looks to a physician for two sorts of assistance. The first is for the direct provision of medical services and the second for information about medical options. If the physician regards some services as immoral, s/he can exercise a conscientious objection to providing them. If s/he feels particularly strongly, s/he may campaign politically to get the State to impose this view even on people who do not accept it. But the patient comes to the doctor for medical, not spiritual, advice, and providing information is not the same thing as using that information.
If a physician declines to perform a service, it is his or her duty to indicate how the patient can obtain it. It is for the patient to decide whether a relevant and legal option is moral.
Conscientious objection does not entitle a physician to impose private moral views on a patient. - Yours, etc,
TIMOTHY KING