Commentary: Special Issue on Conscientious Objection.

This special issue of HEC Forum includes articles on a wide range of specific topics that make significant contributions to conscientious objection scholarship. In this commentary, it is not feasible to provide a comprehensive analysis of each of the articles; and I have not attempted to do so. Instead, for each article, I have selected specific issues and arguments on which to comment.

Making Medical Treatment Decisions for Unrepresented Patients in the ICU. An Official American Thoracic Society/American Geriatrics Society Policy Statement.

Background and Rationale: ICU clinicians regularly care for patients who lack capacity, an applicable advance directive, and an available surrogate decision-maker. Although there is no consensus on terminology, we refer to these patients as "unrepresented." There is considerable controversy about how to make treatment decisions for these patients, and there is significant variability in both law and clinical practice.Purpose and Objectives: This multisociety statement provides clinicians and hospital administrators with recommendations for decision-making on behalf of unrepresented patients in the critical care setting.Methods: An interprofessional, multidisciplinary expert committee developed this policy statement by using an iterative consensus process with a diverse working group representing critical care medicine, palliative care, pediatric medicine, nursing, social work, gerontology, geriatrics, patient advocacy, bioethics, philosophy, elder law, and health law.Main Results: The committee designed its policy recommendations to promote five ethical goals: 1) to protect highly vulnerable patients, 2) to demonstrate respect for persons, 3) to provide appropriate medical care, 4) to safeguard against unacceptable discrimination, and 5) to avoid undue influence of competing obligations and conflicting interests. These recommendations also are intended to strike an appropriate balance between excessive and insufficient procedural safeguards. The committee makes the following recommendations: 1) institutions should offer advance care planning to prevent patients at high risk for becoming unrepresented from meeting this definition; 2) institutions should implement strategies to determine whether seemingly unrepresented patients are actually unrepresented, including careful capacity assessments and diligent searches for potential surrogates; 3) institutions should manage decision-making for unrepresented patients using input from a diverse interprofessional, multidisciplinary committee rather than ad hoc by treating clinicians; 4) institutions should use all available information on the patient's preferences and values to guide treatment decisions; 5) institutions should manage decision-making for unrepresented patients using a fair process that comports with procedural due process; 6) institutions should employ this fair process even when state law authorizes procedures with less oversight.Conclusions: This multisociety statement provides guidance for clinicians and hospital administrators on medical decision-making for unrepresented patients in the critical care setting.

Preventing conscientious objection in medicine from running amok: a defense of reasonable accommodation.

A US Department of Health and Human Services Final Rule, Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care (2019), and a proposed bill in the British House of Lords, the Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill (2017), may well warrant a concern that-to borrow a phrase Daniel Callahan applied to self-determination-conscientious objection in health care has "run amok." Insofar as there are no significant constraints or limitations on accommodation, both rules endorse an approach that is aptly designated "conscience absolutism." There are two common strategies to counter conscience absolutism and prevent conscientious objection in medicine from running amok. One, non-toleration, is to decline to accommodate physicians who refuse to provide legal, professionally accepted, clinically appropriate medical services within the scope of their clinical competence. The other, compromise or reasonable accommodation, is to impose constraints on accommodation. Several arguments for non-toleration are critically analyzed, and I argue that none warrants its acceptance. I maintain that non-toleration is an excessively blunt instrument to prevent conscientious objection in medicine from running amok. Instead, I defend a more nuanced contextual approach that includes constraints on accommodation.

Conscientious Objection, Moral Integrity, and Professional Obligations.

Lauris Kaldjian defends conscientious objection against opponents who claim that there is no place for a physician's personal moral beliefs in the practice of medicine. This essay argues that Kaldjian's defense of conscientious objection relies on a controversial "thick" conception of conscience that opponents may justifiably question. It offers a defense that relies on a relatively "thin" conception of conscience as an agent's core moral beliefs and that understands conscience-based refusals to provide medical services as refusals based on those core beliefs. Enabling physicians to practice medicine without compromising their moral integrity is an important pro tanto reason to accommodate physicians who conscientiously object to providing medical services. However, giving due consideration to the professional obligations of physicians requires constraints on accommodation. Accommodation should not: (1) impede a patient's timely access to relevant information; (2) impede a patient's timely access to referral and counselling; (3) impede a patient's timely access to medical services that are consistent with prevailing professional standards; (4) enable physicians to practice invidious discrimination; (5) place an excessive burden on other health professionals and institutions; or (6) authorize physicians to unilaterally decide to forgo life-sustaining treatment against the wishes of patients or surrogates.

Justifying Conscience Clauses.

In "Disentangling Conscience Protections," in this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Nadia Sawicki offers a taxonomy of conscience protection laws (conscience clauses) that highlights the expansive protections they can offer to health professionals who refuse to provide a medical service for reasons of conscience. Conscience clauses can protect health professionals from adverse actions by public actors (such as administrative agencies, prosecutors, and government funders) or private actors (such as employers, private professional associations, and injured patients), and they can also protect health professionals from being subject to adverse actions for their beliefs, their conduct, or harm that results from their conduct. This taxonomy provides an accurate description of the broad range of protections conscience clauses can offer and thereby is a valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on conscientious objection in health care. But it remains to consider whether the distinctions Sawicki identifies disentangle conscience protections beyond merely providing a taxonomy. In particular, does the taxonomy identify relevant distinctions in relation to determining whether a conscience clause is justified?

Robots as Imagined in the Television Series Humans.

Humans is a science fiction television series set in what appears to be present-day London. What makes it science fiction is that in London and worldwide, there are robots that look like humans and can mimic human behavior. The series raises several important ethical and philosophical questions about artificial intelligence and robotics, which should be of interest to bioethicists.

Surgeons, intensivists, and discretion to refuse requested treatments.

Physicians are expected to engage patients as partners in identifying the possible benefits and harms associated with treatment options and selecting from among medically appropriate treatment options, rather than simply dictating what treatments patients will and will not receive. This collaborative model reflects the recognition that citizens in multicultural societies have diverse values and are likely to have different views about whether the possible benefits of a medical intervention outweigh the possible harms. However, there are circumstances in which the collaborative process breaks down due to irresolvable disagreement. Especially challenging are cases in which patients are expected to die if they do not receive a treatment and either the patients or their surrogates insist on the treatment despite the physician's belief that providing it is ill advised. The source of disagreement is often differing appraisals of the risks and potential benefits. In such cases, physicians generally judge that there is insufficient likelihood or magnitude of benefit to justify the burdens or expense of treatment, while patients or surrogates believe that the small chance of preventing the patient's death is sufficient to justify the costs and potential burdens to the patient. There is a perception that surgeons enjoy considerable discretion in deciding when the risks of a procedure outweigh the expected benefits. An important contrast can be drawn between surgeons and intensivists-physicians who specialize in the medical management of critically ill patients. We will argue that there are good reasons for subjecting the decisions of both surgeons and intensivists to some oversight. We begin by showing that, for many cases, major professional society guidelines for intensivists recommend oversight via a procedural mechanism rather than unilateral decision-making by individual clinicians. Next, we present reasons for adopting a procedural approach to dispute resolution, and we argue that these reasons apply to situations in which intensivists believe that patients or surrogates are requesting inappropriate life support as well as to many disagreements between surgeons and surrogates. Finally, we present and respond to several objections.

Managing conscientious objection in health care institutions.

It is argued that the primary aim of institutional management is to protect the moral integrity of health professionals without significantly compromising other important values and interests. Institutional policies are recommended as a means to promote fair, consistent, and transparent management of conscience-based refusals. It is further recommended that those policies include the following four requirements: (1) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient's/surrogate's timely access to information, counseling, and referral. (2) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if a requested accommodation will not impede a patient's timely access to health care services offered within the institution. (3) Conscience-based refusals will be accommodated only if the accommodation will not impose excessive burdens on colleagues, supervisors, department heads, other administrators, or the institution. (4) Whenever feasible, health professionals should provide advance notification to department heads or supervisors. Formal review may not be required in all cases, but when it is appropriate, several recommendations are offered about standards and the review process. A key recommendation is that when reviewing an objector's reasons, contrary to what some have proposed, it is not appropriate to adopt an adversarial approach modelled on military review boards' assessments of requests for conscientious objector status. According to the approach recommended, the primary function of reviews of objectors' reasons is to engage them in a process of reflecting on the nature and depth of their objections, with the objective of facilitating moral clarity on the part of objectors rather than enabling department heads, supervisors, or ethics committees to determine whether conscientious objections are sufficiently genuine.

Is conscientious objection incompatible with a physician's professional obligations?

In response to physicians who refuse to provide medical services that are contrary to their ethical and/or religious beliefs, it is sometimes asserted that anyone who is not willing to provide legally and professionally permitted medical services should choose another profession. This article critically examines the underlying assumption that conscientious objection is incompatible with a physician's professional obligations (the "incompatibility thesis"). Several accounts of the professional obligations of physicians are explored: general ethical theories (consequentialism, contractarianism, and rights-based theories), internal morality (essentialist and non-essentialist conceptions), reciprocal justice, social contract, and promising. It is argued that none of these accounts of a physician's professional obligations unequivocally supports the incompatibility thesis.