The Elliot Institute News, Vol. 13, No. 7

Conscience Leads to More Complete Support for Women

Cushta Hassan, RN & Joseph Hassan, MBchB

A year ago, Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand published Rose Stewart’s challenging article, “Conscience ‘not always a force for good’,” giving her perspective on conscience and health care.[1]

In the article, Stewart expressed her concern that health professionals who invoke their conscientious objection to abortion or contraception risk infringing the rights of women to reproductive health care. She argued “conscience is not always a force for good.”

In this article, we suggest freedom of conscience is essential for a health-care worker and protects the rights of the patient, the health-care worker and society as a whole.

As health-care workers, we bring ourselves as whole persons to our important role. We are present as real people, not robots. Our background, culture, beliefs, and especially conscience, will and should, affect how we care for our patients.

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Priscilla Coleman, Ph.D.

On October 6th an article titled Is So-Called Post-Abortion Trauma Syndrome a Myth?, written by Zawn Villines, appeared on GoodTherapy. In order to address the question she poses, Villines does not focus on the large international body of peer-reviewed scientific evidence indicating that abortion increases women’s risk of experiencing mental health problems. Instead she exclusively describes results of the flawed Turnaway Study, led by Diana Greene Foster.

Villines highlights the Turnaway findings that there were no significant differences in mental health trajectories between (1) women who had abortions and (2) those denied abortions, because their pregnancies had advanced beyond the legal gestational limit. Villines neglected to mention that 60 percent of the women in the Turnaway group who continued their pregnancies expressed happiness about their pregnancies. And no mention is made by Villines of the glaring methodological shortcomings of the Turnaway study.

The following major problems, among others, preclude trust in all the results obtained.

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We are always interested in publishing relevant content from guest experts, or thoughtful people, or those who just want to share their stories.

We are always interested in publishing relevant content from guest experts, thoughtful people, or those who just want to share their story.

We also welcome regular contributors who may be willing to provide content every month or so.

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