Conscientious Objection in the Medical Migration Context

Abstract

Conscientious objection is one of the most frequent conflict situations between professional obligations of the doctor and the rights of the patient, based on the contradiction between the request of the patient for certain health-care services and the principles (religious or moral) of the medical staff. The ethical challenge of conscientious objection draw the attention to by the medical procedures performed in specific domains such as: reproductive medicine, terminal stages, reparatory and esthetic facial surgery etc. The phenomenon, although recognized, accepted and regulated by law in many states remains an extremely controversial issue in the medical field due to the ethical dilemmas derived from the right to freedom of conscience in correlation with preservation of the right to health-care. In this paper we aim to highlight the main ethical aspects involved by the conscientious objection in the medical field, with statements on the complexity and diversity of the conscientious objection identified in the space of multicultural societies specific for medical migration.