Question Do Catholic hospitals have a right not to perform abortions?

Accepted:
May 26, 2010

Comments

Well THAT'S a big question, I won't attempt to answer. But I might phrase it differently: 'should' they have that right ... since I prefer to assume that we get to decide which 'rights' to apportion, rather than that we somehow discover the 'rights' that already exist .... And to begin an answer to such a large question you'd have to begin working out very general views on the nature of morality in general, as well on the relationship between public and private, and more -- and no doubt you might like to distinguish between such cases as "purely" elective abortions v. those which are in some sense medically-motivated or "necessary" (eg threatening the life of the mother) ... Even more interestingly, esp with respect to the latter distinctions, you might want to explore exactly how it is that abortion has come to be so vehemently opposed by the Catholic hierarchy -- in fact I recently was reading that until the 20th century the Church's opinion on abortion in general was far more liberal and lenient than it is today -- which raises the very interesting question about the degree to which religious tenets (incl moral tenets) are devised by quite fallible human beings (and thus open at least to discussion and engagement) ... For if you feel (for example) that religious teachings do NOT require that Catholicism be so thoroughly opposed to abortion in every form (as was believed until the 20th century), then you might have a different answer to your question than if you feel that they DO .....

best,

Actually, the Catholic Church has always held that abortion -- understood as deliberately ending the life of an ensouled human being in the womb -- is gravely immoral. The changed view to which Andrew refers is the result of changed understanding of when ensoulment occurs. Remember that relative to the history of Christianity, biology has only recently revealed what happens in conception and gestation; Thomas Aquinas, for example, thought that life began at "quickening," or the mother's awareness of fetal movement -- typically after (what we now know is) 15-20 weeks of life and growth!

As for your question, I'd refer again to Aquinas: everyone has a moral right to refuse to act against his or her conscience. To deliberately do what your conscience forbids would be morally wrong, always. (The converse doesn't hold, by the way: it is not always morally right to do what your conscience permits. Your conscience could be in error. But on the negative side, even if it is in error, if you do what it forbids you are by that very fact acting wrongly.) So if Catholic health care providers are convinced in conscience that abortion is morally wrong, then they would have the moral right to refuse to perform them.

Just a brief comment, which is that, even if one always does have a moral right not to do things one regards as morally objectionable, it does not follow that one has a legal or political right to do so, i.e., that one cannot legitimately face legal consequences for not doing so. It is fairly easy to come up with counter-examples by thinking of people whose moral views are themselves pretty objectionable. I don't know which issue the questioner probably had in mind, but both seem worth considering.

For what it is worth, I think similar such examples make Aquinas's view very doubtful. If one thinks a thing is morally abhorrent, say, when it is, in fact, morally obligatory, then it is not at all clear that one has a moral right not to do the thing. Indeed, it seems almost contradictory to say one does: One has a moral right not to do something that is morally obligatory? Presumably, the resolution of this "paradox" lies in distinguishing subjective from objective elements of this, as is now pretty common.

Question Do Catholic hospitals have a right not to perform abortions? Accepted:May 26, 2010

Question Do Catholic hospitals have a right not to perform abortions?

Accepted:
May 26, 2010