Archbishop launches book on medical ethics – Article published in The Catholic Weekly Australia

Bioethical concerns are front and centre, with Archbishop Anthony Fisher launching a new book on the right to conscientiously object a mere day after the founder of Victoria’s “Reason Party”, Fiona Patten, announced she would introduce a bill to target Catholic hospitals who refuse to provide abortions. Archbishop Fisher launched Dr Xavier Symons’ Why Conscience Matters: A Defence of Conscientious Objection in Healthcare at the Australian Catholic University’s North Sydney campus on 2 August.

“XAVIER’S ARGUMENT FOR A BROAD RIGHT TO CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION IS NOT AN APPEAL FOR THE FREEDOM ARBITRARILY TO FOIST PERSONAL TASTES UPON PATIENTS BUT RATHER A CLAIM THAT WE MUST ENSURE CLINICIANS HAVE EVERY OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME THE BEST AT WHAT THEY DO BY ENSURING THEIR MORAL AND PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY.”

“Dr Symons highlights the shortfalls of thinking of healthcare as simply service provision—in Fiona Patten’s terms ‘providing the full range of services’—where doctors are considered manufacturers or retailers or civil servants and where patient preference is the primary factor in decision-making,” Archbishop Fisher said. ” Such a conception of medicine risks devolving into a mechanistic practice, where doctor and patient are opposite sides of a transactional exchange, where decisions are made only by recourse to official guidelines however constructed, and where protocols and procedures trump personhood and thinking humanely.” More on this Article can be found here: https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/archbishop-launches-book-on-medical-ethics/