ArticleBMC medical ethics2018
Conscientious objection to intentional killing: an argument for toleration.
Article in BMC medical ethics, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Building Moral Community in an Age of Polarization: A Model for Reconciling Rights of Conscience in Healthcare Organizations.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2026Article
- Conscientious Objection and Other Motivations for Refusal to Treat in Hastened Death: A Systematic Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Quotas: Enabling Conscientious Objection to Coexist with Abortion Access.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2021Article
- Conscientious objection to abortion: why it should be a specified legal right for doctors in South Korea.BMC medical ethics · 2020Article
- Conscientious Objection: A Talmudic Paradigm Shift.Journal of religion and health · 2020Article
- Refusals to perform ritual circumcision: a qualitative study of doctors' professional and ethical reasoning.BMC medical ethics · 2020Article
- Protecting reasonable conscientious refusals in health care.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn the debate on conscientious objection in healthcare, proponents of conscience rights often point to the imperative to protect the health professional's moral integrity. Their opponents hold that the moral integrity argument alone can at most justify accommodation of conscientious objectors as a "moral courtesy", as the argument is insufficient to establish a general moral right to accommodation, let alone a legal right. MAIN TEXT: This text draws on political philosophy in order to argue for a legal right to accommodation. The moral integrity arguments should be supplemented by the requirement to protect minority rights in liberal democracies. Citizens have a right to live in accordance with their fundamental moral convictions, and a right to equal access to employment. However, this right should not be unconditional, as that would unduly infringe on the rights of other citizens. The right must be limited to cases where the moral basis is more fundamental in a sense that all reasonable citizens in a liberal democracy should accept, such as the constitutive role of the inviolability of human life in liberal democracies.
conclusionThere should be a legal, yet circumscribed, right to accommodation for conscientious objectors refusing to provide healthcare services that they reasonably consider to involve the intentional killing of a human being.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.