The Ordo Iuris Institute has been involved in defending professionals: doctors, pharmacists, nurses and midwives, who are committed to practicing their profession in accordance with reliable medical knowledge and their own conscience. We believe that defending the rights of conscience of medical professionals may ensure for all Poles freedom from state interference in this area of human life, which is fundamental for our identity. The Ordo Iuris lawyers provide legal assistance to Professor Bogdan Chazan, whose story has contributed like nothing else to the development of social awareness of the obligation to oppose the statutory lawlessness, including the admissibility of eugenically motivated abortion.
Recognising the need to expand the scope of activities undertaken by the Institute, we are constantly committed to defending freedom of conscience in international forums, intervening and participating in numerous initiatives for religious freedom and freedom of conscience in the European Parliament, the Council of Europe and the United Nations.
On 7th of October 2015 the Constitutional Tribunal of the Republic of Poland, sitting as Grand Chamber, issued a verdict in a case K 12/14, regarding the freedom of conscience of a medical doctors. The constitutional review concerned statutory conditions for rising conscientious objection. It has particular importance to those physicians who refuse performance of abortion, prescription of contraceptives or IVF procedure pharmaceuticals. The Tribunal stated that a right to conscientious objection must be respected even if not expressly admitted in statutory form.
© 2016 ORDO IURIS - Instytut Na Rzecz Kultury Prawnej
