Conceptualising Conscientious Objection as Resistance

Abstract

While conscientious objection in healthcare is becoming increasingly studied, the legislative implementation of the principle is often without definition, leading to the question 'what is conscientious objection?' As this article will demonstrate, it is useful to reconceptualise conscientious objection as 'resistance' to dominant discourses and understandings in society, which have been internalised and co-opted as a way of acting as a 'safety-valve' for individualised dissent, as well as reinforcing perceptions of freedom, choice and tolerance in liberal democratic society. This non-normative assessment of conscientious objection therefore seeks to provide a framework for understanding why certain forms of resistance may be considered conscientious and some may not, before then applying this understanding to issues such as abortion and female genital mutilation. personal capacity on the basis of a belief that there is a moral obligation to not perform that procedure 3. Yet is such an understanding sufficient? Are all refusals to perform based on a moral imperative conscientious? How do we determine what objections are conscientious, and which are unacceptable? The purpose of this article is to examine this question in more detail, and thereby reconceptualise conscientious objection in terms of 'resistance'. By using a Foucauldian framework in which dominant discourses are linked to power, it will be demonstrated that conscientious objection constitutes resistance against a dominant way of thinking within society, and as such, cannot be divorced from the social, cultural and historical context in which that act takes place. To put it another way, what may be considered a 'conscientious' objection in one state or culture may be considered unconscionable behaviour in another. The intention, therefore, is not to make any normative statements about conscientious objection, and whether it should be permissible, but to provide an explanation as to why some types of behaviour may be considered as 'conscientious', and why some may not. Finally, this analytic framework will then be applied to debates over medical procedures that may be considered socially accepted, such as abortion, and those largely considered abhorrent, such as female circumcision. 2. Networks of Power, Networks of Resistance: A Framework for Conceptualising Conscientious Objection Before entering into the discussion of conscientious objection as a form of resistance, it is first necessary to expand upon the concepts of power and resistance as defined by Foucault. For Foucault, the purpose of his work on power was to 'determine what are, in their mechanisms, effects, their relations, the various power-apparatuses that operate at various levels of society…' 4. The intent, therefore, was not to provide for a theory of power, but a way of analysing power relations 5. Foucault determined that it was not useful to think of 3