Conscientious objection in medicine: Experience in Chile

Latin American countries have slowly enacted laws decriminalizing abortion in three circumstances: Life-threatening risk for the pregnant woman, extra-uterine non-viability of malformed foetus, and pregnancy due to rape or incest. Chile is one of the last countries to adopt such a law, formulated in an increasingly restrictive format. Conservative politicians and Church-related healthcare institutions promptly announced individual and institutional conscientious objection based on the right of private facilities to obey their ideology and personal moral integrity. Juridical consultations and Constitutional Court rulings allowed private hospitals to uphold their objection even if contracted to provide some public health services. Under these conditions, only a few hundred women requested and obtained a legal abortion, while an estimated 100,000 continued to depend on unsafe procedures. Bioethical debate was silenced by the unfettered drive for conscientious objection that continues to limit women's autonomy, and fails to ease the public health scourge of massive unsafe clandestine abortions.