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Accomodating Religious Belief in Healthcare

3 Components to a religion:

  • Belief in a transcendent reality (God, Life After Death etc) and a human relationship to it
  • Worship/Ritual Behaviour
  • A moral code

Our sense of religion is linked to our sense of identity, and our identity is linked to our autonomy.

"Respecting" a religious belief could mean respecting someones autonomy:

  • Refusing treatments in jehovahs witnesses etc
  • The issues there can link to how autonomous can you be when influenced by others in your group

We might respect autonomy differently, depending on whether autonomous beliefs are "coherent" or not.

Tolerence, fundamentally implies you disapprove or dislike something, without doing something to stop it.

Key legal considerations when interpreting religion is:

"IS it a protected religious belief?"

As to what is that is: Lord Toulson in Hodkin

and the equality act 2010: section 10

The second consideration is: "has there been a significant impact upon the rights and interests of others?" (sometimes called encroachement)

Conscientious Objection

Is mentioned in the Abortion Act 1967 - people don't have to participate

What counts as consience? Something that causes significant moral distress, something that asks the objector to violate significant personal moral imperatives. Not simply "dislike" or moral judgements about the patient.