Not So Conscientious Objection: When Can Doctors Refuse to Treat?

November 11, 2019

(STAT News) – There are three general contexts in which it is permissible and sometimes obligatory to refuse care: when doctors are subjected to abusive treatment, when the treatment requested is outside a doctor’s scope of practice, or when providing the requested treatment would otherwise violate one’s duties as a physician, such as the Hippocratic mandate to “first do no harm.” But none of these rationales can justify physicians denying care based on their personal beliefs.