From Public Discourse. (H/T Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

This Thursday the Council of Europe, a transnational body created in 1949 to promote democracy and human rights, will vote on a resolution and series of recommendations on conscience protection. Americans, who faced similar issues during the debate over the health care overhaul, will find much of interest in the resolution. It would create guidelines that encourage member states to force doctors to perform abortions in some circumstances and to make referrals for them in every circumstance. Drafted by the pro-abortion British parliamentarian Christine McCafferty, it is an all-out assault on conscience and community.

The central feature of the resolution is a call for enforcement against conscientious objectors who refuse to perform or make referrals for abortion. The report encourages member states to “establish effective complaint mechanisms that can address abuses of the right to conscientious objection and provide women with an effective and timely remedy.” While many European countries are woefully lacking in conscience protection, authorities have sometimes hesitated to enforce these unjust laws. This provision seeks to end that. As the European Center for Law and Justice says in its report on the proposed law, “the ‘conscience clause’ is nothing other than an official immunity from liability for refusing to participate in abortion.” While the law fails to specify how this unjust law will be enforced, doctors can be forgiven for worrying that its implementation will be far from sensitive and sympathetic.

Among the report’s many specific recommendations, the most sinister sounding may be a call for the creation of national registries of conscientious objectors in order to further what the report describes as “oversight and monitoring mechanisms.” In Norway, doctors are already required to notify hospitals of their conscientious objector status, and the hospitals in turn are required to report the names of conscientious objectors to state authorities. The goal of these mechanisms seems to be to enable a highly inappropriate and political scrutiny of doctors who have deeply held objections to procedures like abortion and euthanasia.

The new guideline further restricts conscience by requiring that doctors give timely notice of their conscientious objections. But what happens if a doctor’s view on conscience changes? What if he is serving as the sole medical provider in an under-served area? Will he be required to give up his job?

There is already discrimination against conscientious objectors in Britain, where the National Health Service has urged hospitals to ask job applicants whether or not they are conscientious objectors and to refuse to hire conscientious objectors unless there is an already present physician willing to perform acts like abortion. One’s conscientious objector status becomes a matter of administrative record that must be consulted at every step in one’s employment, from hiring, to promotion, to professional security. Conscientious objectors become last hired, first fired.

This will make it harder for Christians to have an influence where it matters.