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A shocking news headline grabbed my attention recently: “Conscientious objection ‘may become indefensible’ according to new WHO guidance.” Rights of conscience, like all other fundamental human rights, do have limits and certain conditions that must apply for their exercise, but what could possibly justify the World Health Organization (WHO) rhetorically condemning conscientious objection?

Promoting abortion is the reason for this latest assault against conscience and the right to life of preborn babies. The WHO issued a new “Abortion Care Guideline” in March 2022 to update and replace all previous recommendations. The document says it wants to “enable evidence-based decision-making with respect to quality abortion care.” What it really does is attempt to portray abortion as ordinary health care and places it under the controversial heading of “sexual and reproductive health rights.” Flowing from the false assertions that abortion is “health care” and a “right” are a long list of recommendations to eliminate barriers to access, including curtailing the rights of health care workers to conscientious objection.

United Nations (UN) agencies like the WHO and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) used to shy away from open promotion of abortion. I remember from my time at UN world conferences in the 1990s, and at the UN meetings in New York in the 2000s, hearing UN officials repeat the mantra that they did not promote abortion as a means of family planning. Abortion remains illegal in many countries, and an “international right to abortion” has never been accepted despite many attempts to push this agenda. The trend today is increasingly for radical feminists and other abortion promoters to act as if there were a recognized “right to abortion” that supersedes genuine fundamental human rights like conscientious objection.

The WHO’s carefully worded recommendation is as follows.

“In spite of the human rights obligation to ensure conscientious objection does not hinder access to quality abortion care, and previous WHO recommendations aimed at ensuring conscientious objection does not undermine or hinder access to abortion care, conscientious objection continues to operate as a barrier to access to quality abortion care. It is critical that States ensure compliance with regulations and design/organize health systems to ensure access to and continuity of quality abortion care. If it proves impossible to regulate conscientious objection in a way that respects, protects and fulfils abortion seekers’ rights, conscientious objection in abortion provision may become indefensible.”

To “hinder access” to abortion would be a problem if it was a good procedure, but abortion is one of the gravest ethical violations a person can commit and a total denial of the right to life of preborn children.

The WHO document has it backwards. There is no human rights obligation to ensure access to abortion. The reverse is true. Respect for human rights means preventing and banning abortion. The WHO tolerates conscientious objection only to the extent that “abortion seekers” do not experience any difficulty in having their preborn babies killed. Conscientious objection to abortion should be universal and promoted rather than condemned or relegated to the status of a second-class right.

This kind of ethical blindness is a profound evil. Pope Francis says that “respect for life as a gift from God sometimes requires brave choices that go against the current, which in particular circumstances may become points of conscientious objection.” He denounces experimentation on early human life and various forms of killing as “sin against God the Creator.”

One must go back to fundamental principles in the face of the twisted assertions of abortion advocates. The medical professions and the entire health care enterprise are directed to healing and safeguarding the right to life. To turn healers into killers is the worst perversion of medicine. Abortion is the intentional and direct killing of a human embryo or fetal child and is incompatible with the ethical practice of medicine. It should be prohibited by law just as many other forms of killing are illegal.

In the face of unjust laws that “legalize” the killing of babies through abortion, we have a moral obligation to oppose and work hard to overturn this gravest of ethical violations against justice for our preborn brothers and sisters. A well-formed conscience must object to participating in or cooperating with abortion.

The Church has always had the highest regard for the importance of conscience in the moral life. She insists in the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the grave responsibility we have to form our consciences well and sees this as a lifelong task (CCC 1783-84). It stands to reason that being able to distinguish good from evil and then choosing what is moral is necessary for a virtuous life.

When moral discernment compels one to conscientious objection, this is a very grave matter. A person could certainly err in reasoning. Conscientious discernment is far from infallible. People might even misrepresent a self-interested stance as conscience based. That is why it is legitimate to objectively evaluate the reasonableness of conscience claims and test the merits of people’s conscientious objections. There are many elements that need to be investigated and resolved in these cases, as I wrote in my doctoral dissertation, Conscience and Health Care: A Bioethical Analysis. Nevertheless, a major goal of ethics is to prevent the serious human rights violation of coercing people to disobey their well-formed consciences.

Over the centuries countless martyrs have chosen to sacrifice their lives rather than to violate their beliefs and perform acts, like idol worship, that contravened their consciences. The Church holds up the Christian martyrs as witnesses to the sacredness and bedrock importance of conscience. It is a tragedy when the importance of conscience rights is rejected. It boggles the mind when one sees violations of conscience justified in the name of “abortion rights.”