CONSCIENTIOUS-OBJECTION.INFO

Denise Phelan was denied a legal abortion three years ago in circumstances so extreme she still finds it harrowing to speak about it. “My anger wakes me up at night. It’s a deep, almost in-the-bone anger,” she says. She and her husband, Richard Gosnold, are also still grieving for the loss of their baby, Alenja. Their trauma has been prolonged and they feel it is too late now to try for another pregnancy.

She became pregnant in late 2015 at age 40, but testing after the 10-week scan brought devastating news. There was a fatal genetic disorder, which meant that the foetus would die in the womb or at birth. One doctor told the couple: “You can go to the mainland,” meaning travel to England. However, Phelan suffers from extreme and debilitating migraine, which is triggered by stress. She became very ill and could not travel. After researching her rights, she found there was a mental health clause that could enable her to have a termination in Northern Ireland. Phelan had recently survived several years of intense depression. The couple were terrified about the potential long-term impact of the dilemma she was now facing. But no one was willing to refer her for an abortion in Belfast.

“I felt as though this wall of religious and political hatred had descended around us,” says Phelan. “We were seeing all these doctors, but it was like a nail was being driven into you and each one of them was driving it one blow further. I realised no one was going to help us. It was cruel beyond belief. It was mental torture. We were just set adrift, totally alone. We had no choices. I had to give up. I had to go out and get maternity clothes and people were congratulating me and asking when the baby was due. I was sent to a bereavement midwife at the same time as the baby was still alive and active in my womb. I had to go to antenatal classes. We were also told that if the baby was still alive at birth she would be in pain and have to live her brief life on a morphine drip.”

When she was 36 weeks pregnant, Phelan fell as she was out walking. At a scan the next day she said to the doctor, “She’s gone, isn’t she?” The baby died on a Wednesday. The following Monday, birth was induced.

“I cry every day,” says Phelan. “I had postnatal depression and both of us have had suicidal thoughts. We both suffer from insomnia. I had to leave my job.” Gosnold, who is an artist, was offered medication and put on a waiting list for counselling.

Source: ‘The doctors in Northern Ireland knew my baby would die. But I was refused an abortion’ – The Guardian, Oct 6, 2019

Woman with serious health risks and lethal fetal abnormality denied abortion at hospital because she wasn’t sick enough

In December 2018, Chelsea was about 15 weeks into a planned pregnancy when a specialist at University of Cincinnati Medical Center told her that her fetus had triploidy, a condition where three sets of chromosomes develop in each cell instead of two. Babies with triploidy are stillborn or die shortly after birth. The news devastated Chelsea, who had suffered a miscarriage months earlier. The condition also put her at higher risk for choriocarcinoma, a fast-growing cancer, and preeclampsia, a potentially deadly pregnancy complication characterized by high blood pressure. Chelsea’s blood pressure had already been unusually high. Then the doctor delivered the final blow: Affiliated with a public university, the hospital would end her pregnancy only once Chelsea was too sick to continue it.
“My head was spinning because of the information that I was being given, but I just felt like I was on an alien planet,” Chelsea told Rewire.News. “There was no question in my mind: I’m not going to risk my organ function to carry a non-viable pregnancy to term.” The “best-case scenario [was] the baby would be stillborn, or the baby would suffocate to death, which to me was not something that I was willing to put my child through,” she said.

Chelsea wrote a letter to a state legislator who was trying to ban the particular abortion method that she needed. “I cannot have a dilation & curettage (D&C) in a hospital like I did with my last loss, as this baby has a heartbeat,” Chelsea wrote. “Instead I have to go to an abortion clinic with doctors and staff that I do not know. I have to go in with protesters screaming at me on the worst day of my life. I am praying for a miscarriage. I never thought I would say that after experiencing one before. But I thank God termination is an option for people like me.”

Fortunately, Chelsea was healthy enough to get her abortion at a Planned Parenthood clinic, but she needed three visits to comply with Ohio’s 24-hour waiting period: One for counseling and an ultrasound, one to sign a consent form after the doctor who would perform her procedure had signed it, and a third for the abortion. She was also forced by law to read a packet about how she could instead parent her child—something she desperately wanted to do—or put her baby up for adoption. Each barrier felt like another blow. “It just feels like death by a thousand cuts,” Chelsea said. “I kept saying, stick the knife in and keep twisting it, because it just made a bad situation horrific.”

Source: Rewire.news, ‘Not Dead Enough’: Public Hospitals Deny Life-Saving Abortion Care to People in Need, Mar 7, 2019, by Amy Littlefield

European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology

By Christian Fiala and Joyce H. Arthur
Published online 23 July 2017

Abstract: A widespread assumption has taken hold in the field of medicine that we must allow health care professionals the right to refuse treatment under the guise of ‘conscientious objection’ (CO), in particular for women seeking abortions. At the same time, it is widely recognized that the refusal to treat creates harm and barriers for patients receiving reproductive health care. In response, many recommendations have been put forward as solutions to limit those harms. Further, some researchers make a distinction between true CO and ‘obstructionist CO’, based on the motivations or actions of various objectors.

This paper argues that ‘CO’ in reproductive health care should not be considered a right, but an unethical refusal to treat. Supporters of CO have no real defence of their stance, other than the mistaken assumption that CO in reproductive health care is the same as CO in the military, when the two have nothing in common (for example, objecting doctors are rarely disciplined, while the patient pays the price). Refusals to treat are based on non-verifiable personal beliefs, usually religious beliefs, but introducing religion into medicine undermines best practices that depend on scientific evidence and medical ethics. CO therefore represents an abandonment of professional obligations to patients. Countries should strive to reduce the number of objectors in reproductive health care as much as possible until CO can feasibly be prohibited. Several Scandinavian countries already have a successful ban on CO.

sciencedirect.com

 In October 2016, Valentina Milluzzo of Italy, 32, was miscarrying much-wanted twins at 19 weeks of pregnancy. But she died in the Cannizzaro Hospital in Catania Sicily after being denied an abortion, despite no hope for survival of her twins. She became septic and suffered hours of agony while sepsis destroyed her organs. A doctor dismissed this as “labour pains” and refused to give her pain relief. Valentina’s parents were present and heard the doctor say he couldn’t do an abortion because he was a “conscientious objector”. Although one of the fetuses had died, greatly increasing the risk of sepsis for Valentina, the doctor refused to act because “the child’s heart is still beating.”

The hospital rejected the family’s claims that the doctor was a “conscientious objector” but the family is supported by their direct eyewitness testimony as well as the hospital’s own hastily-published preliminary report, which revealed negligence on the part of several doctors. Crucially, there is never any excuse for a pregnant woman to develop sepsis while in hospital, because it is a fast-acting, life-threatening condition that is almost inevitable once a woman starts miscarrying. The family filed suit against the hospital and doctors.

In November 2018, seven doctors at the Cannizzaro Hospital in Sicily were indicted for Valentina’s death. The charges were multiple culpable manslaughter. Source.  Unfortunately, the trial would focus on medical negligence and not conscientious objection, even though the latter was the primary cause of death because it led directly to the numerous instances of medical negligence. The trial was to start in July 2019 but was delayed, then came the pandemic.

Finally, in October 2022, four of the doctors were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six months, though with suspended sentences. The other three doctors were acquitted. Source. During the sentencing, the court did not discuss the fact that the doctors were conscientious objectors.

The four doctors appealed the decision. In November 2024, the appeal court acquitted the doctors who refused to save Valentina’s life, ruling that “the facts grounding the offence do not exist”. But the doctor’s claim of conscientious objection was not even before the court. Since Valentina’s death, her family has consistently maintained that her life could have been saved if a timely therapeutic abortion had been performed. Yet throughout her prolonged hospitalization, abortion was never presented as an option because the doctors were conscientious objectors. Source

Fact Sheet on Valentina Milluzzo’s Death
November 15, 2016
Information in this fact sheet was compiled from publicly available sources like media reports, statements from the family, and the preliminary official report.
Read the fact sheet: [pdf]

When a Fetal Heartbeat Is More Important, Sometimes Women Die
Oct. 30, 2016, by Silvana Agathon and Lisa Canitano
Read the article: [pdf]

Preliminary Report from the Board of Health, and Critiques
October 24, 2016 (revised Nov 24), by Joyce Arthur
This document contains the preliminary report from the Board of Health in Catania regarding the death of Valentina Miluzzo on Oct 16, in both Italian and English. Following the report are three instructive criticisms that were posted in response to the report, also in Italian and English. Then a critique of the report by Joyce Arthur, showing that the timeline in the report demonstrates medical negligence.
Read the article: [pdf]

Valentina, who had no choice but to die from a miscarriage
Oct. 27, 2016, by Dr. Elisabetta Canitano
Read the article: [pdf]
Read the article in French: [pdf]
Read the article in German: [pdf]

Police launch inquiry into death of woman ‘refused’ an abortion by Sicilian doctors
The Guardian, 23, Oct 2016 by Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Source: www.theguardian.com

Valentina’s father: “My daughter screamed in pain, the doctor said he couldn’t intervene.”
Oct. 20, 2016, Catania Italy: Video of interview with Valentina’s father

Source (translated from Italian): [valentinas-father-interview pdf]

Abortion laws under fire in Italy after death of Valentina Milluzzo
dw.com, 20.10.2016 by Elizabeth Schumacher
Source: www.dw.com

Italy abortion row as woman dies after hospital miscarriage
bbc.com, 20.10.2016
Source: www.bbc.com

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