Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham (UK).
Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden; UNDP-UNFPA-UNICEF-WHO-World Bank Special Programme of Research, Development and Research Training in Human Reproduction (HRP), Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland.
Health Policy. 2023 Mar;129:104716. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2023.104716. Epub 2023 Feb 2.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and international human rights bodies have long urged states to take steps to ensure that 'conscientious objection' does not undermine access to abortion in practice. This review uses an established methodology to identify and integrate evidence of the health and human rights impacts of the practice of conscientious objection/refusal. The evidence identified in this review suggests strongly that conscientious objection negatively affects the rights of abortion seekers and has negative implications for the rights of non-objecting health workers. This is exacerbated in situations where an exercise of 'conscience' goes beyond 'opting out' of providing care and extends into seeking to prevent abortion through dissuasion, misinformation, misdirection, delay, and sometimes abuse. The insights from this review suggest that states must take better and further action to centre abortion seekers in the regulation of conscientious objection, and to prevent and ensure accountability for rights-limiting manifestations of conscience that go beyond opting out of direct provision of abortion care in non-emergency settings.
世界卫生组织（世卫组织）和国际人权机构长期以来一直敦促各国采取措施，确保“出于良心拒服兵役”在实践中不会损害获得堕胎的机会。本审查采用既定方法，确定和综合了出于良心拒服兵役/拒绝提供服务的做法对健康和人权产生的影响的证据。本审查中确定的证据强烈表明，出于良心拒服兵役会对堕胎寻求者的权利产生负面影响，并对无异议的卫生工作者的权利产生不利影响。在某些情况下，这种“出于良心”的做法不仅限于“选择不提供护理”，而是延伸到通过劝阻、错误信息、误导、拖延，有时还通过滥用，试图阻止堕胎，情况就会变得更加严重。本审查的结果表明，各国必须采取更好和进一步的行动，将堕胎寻求者置于出于良心拒服兵役规定的中心，防止和确保对超出在非紧急情况下选择不直接提供堕胎护理的范围、限制权利的良心表现追究责任。
