The United Kingdom was the first country to legalize the refusal to provide health care in the name of “conscientious objection”, allowing doctors to refuse to provide abortions based on personal or religious beliefs.

A historical review into the origins and motivation behind the “conscientious objection” clause in the 1967 Abortion Act found that Parliamentarians and the medical profession wanted to preserve doctors’ authority over patients, protect objecting doctors from liability, and appease religious anti-abortion beliefs.

These factors point to an unprincipled basis for the introduction of “conscientious objection” into healthcare, which ultimately came at the expense of patients’ rights and health. The “conscience clause” also represented a negation of basic ethical directives in medical practice including patient autonomy and physicians’ fiduciary duty to patients. The term “conscientious objection”— borrowed from the military but misapplied to healthcare — helped mask the practice as a moral “right” of doctors, even while it disregarded patients’ health and dignity.

Refusing to provide treatment on the basis of “conscience” is harmful and discriminatory, and should be phased out gradually using disincentives and other measures to encourage objectors to choose other fields.