“We proclaim and lay claim to our autonomy and freedom as health professionals and we demand the right to conscientious objection that belongs to us and that we be allowed to exercise our rights as well as to freely practice our profession,” he said.
Dr. José Narro, who was Mexico’s Secretary of Health from 2016 to 2018, joined the voices of concern at the press conference and called on the Senate’s political coalitions to hold discussions about the freedom of health professionals and their right to conscientious objection.
Narro, who is also the former rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, expressed his concern, warning that the initiative “attacks that essential freedom that health professionals must have to act in accordance with their convictions, their beliefs, their ethics, for their ability to see and analyze professional situations and at the same time attend to the right of patients who come to them to have their health protected.”
Dr. Rosario Laris, director general of the Safe Sex platform who holds a doctorate in bioethics, provided at the press conference an explanation of conscientious objection in the context of the medical profession.
Laris explained that “conscientious objection also arises from the knowledge that the health professional has acquired thanks to his academic preparation and that he continues to gain with the sum of his daily experience, which allows him to consider whether any treatment is appropriate or not for his patient.”
“That is, this ‘conscience’ impels him to seek the good of the patient at all times,” she stressed.