Conscientious objection from Scientific Ethics and its relationship with ideology, religion and laws

Conscientious objection (CO) is the refusal to obey laws due to moral, religious or belief principles. The ideologies or religions underlying laws or constitutions have been seldom analyzed. Scientific Ethics finds that constitutions and laws have implicit or explicit ideological elements that are imposed on citizens, and denies or forbids others that lead citizens to CO. Ideological analysis is critical for laws that violate other rights, moral or ethical principles that are accepted by everyone and aggressions to humans or animals. CO is critically different in the cases of military service, abortion (killing fetuses), vaccination or tax payments. In the case of abortion the commandment is to kill a fetus in certain conditions; but to kill human beings contradicts the medical foundations and most religions or ideologies. Constitutions and laws should respect the ideologies or religions of that people so citizens can express and live his or her ideology without contradiction or CO. A law on abortion should provide centers of abortion served by professionals that share that ideology; this would avoid CO. © 2017 Centros Culturales de México, A.C. Published by Masson Doyma México S.A. All rights reserved.