The subtle line between conscientious objection and sabotage

The Washington Post recently reported the news of a dozen of nurses from a New Jersey hospital who claimed the right not to assist a patient before and after an abortion. Although conscience clauses are very common worldwide, they usually allow the health care personnel to refuse to perform abortions (or other morally controversial treatments) but not to refuse to assist a patient before and after the abortion. For this reason, the request put forward by the New Jersey nurses is particularly interesting. One of these nurses declared to the newspapers “I’m a nurse so I can help people, not help kill, and it just doesn’t seem right to me”. Now, it is hard to understand how someone who takes care of a woman who just had an abortion is somehow helping to kill. The care these nurses are refusing to provide involves feeding and washing the patient, maybe giving her pain killer drugs, but certainly not helping to kill, because the killing happens during the abortion, not before or after.

Francesca Minerva, Practical Ethics, december 5, 2011, continua qui.