In terms of new doctors, most junior doctors don’t get anywhere near the theatre so it is only registrars that you need - and if you can’t get enough O&G registrars prepared to carry out abortions then the whole NHS service provision is in trouble.

Whether it’s correct to assume performing an abortion is taking a life and causing harm is a difficult question of personal conscience.

If a given doctor rationalizes abortion as wrong and they object because they would rather do other medical work, we have to respect their decision in that instance.

Perhaps the NHS should implement a system whereby trainee doctors can express that preference early on, and then not work in an area of medicine in a role where they would be asked to perform abortions. I think there is plenty of room for accommodation, and I would not like to see doctors compelled to compromise their morals or risk losing their job, because that will lead to a stressed and unhappy workforce.

It’s not the role of the government or the NHS to dictate a given morality to either the doctors or the patients who they treat.

As long as there are some doctors who will perform abortions, the patients will have to travel to them, though it would also make sense for the NHS to manage their staff such that they have a team of doctors willing to perform abortions at each hospital with the technical facilities to perform the procedure.

Before abortion became a political hot potato, OT scholars were fairly united in agreeing that the Hebrew understanding of when life began was at first breath - therefore at birth. Look up the word “nephesh”, also Gen 2:7, 1 Kings 17: 17-24 & Ezekiel 37: 8-10. (Romans 8: 9-11 and James 2: 26 play on this concept,too.)

Also bear in mind that if people were fighting and caused a fetus to miscarry, the punishment was a fine, whereas if a woman was killed the penalty was death. Yet despite this evidence some people are keen to take tiny passages from Isaiah, Jeremiah and Psalms out of context to claim that a fetus and human being are direct equivalents. If a fetus was a person, wouldn’t “a life for a life” apply here too?

It’s also worth noting that there are thousands of laws in the OT but nothing specifically about abortion. And abortion was certainly practiced back in them days. The Assyrians, who after all lived right next to the Israelites and had a bit of a set-to with them on a few occasions, had a law dating from the 12th century BC. With other serious offences (and I would think if abortion was equivalent to murder then it’d count as serious) there is a provision forbidding it even if it is something not even practised by the Israelites but only by their neighbours.

Personally, as a Christian I’m sick of prosperity-gospel-spouting Americans claiming ownership of the Bible then distorting it to support their prejudices and lifestyles.

If you’re looking for a specific Jesus statement, you won’t get one, but then you won’t get one on many ethical issues. There’s plenty of text indicating the concept was strongly frowned upon by the early church as soon as the early 2nd Century, though. Since 1st Century BC Jewish ethicists said much the same thing, it would seem odd to believe there was a hundred year change of heart which was then reversed.

I’d also dispute the idea that Christianity defines abortion as murder & I’d love to see you provide biblical evidence for that.

Erm, to a significant extent the growth in conscience objectors is due to a steadily increasing number of Muslim doctors.

I’d also disagree that there’s an ‘exact mirror’ between being prevented from wearing religious dress, and being required to undertake acts your religion defines as murder, but hey ho.

In this case, though, it seems that the possibility of opting out is making it more difficult for women to get an abortion if that’s what they want. What if a young woman living with her parents didn’t want them to know she had had an abortion? Wouldn’t it be much more difficult if she’d had to get the procedure done in London? A common-sense solution would be to make sure that in teaching hospitals there are enough non-student doctors able to perform the procedure that they can guarantee they’ll be able to cater for people in situations where they require the procedure done locally. Maybe this is already the case - doesn’t seem a complicated idea and the concept of planning should not be alien to the NHS!

Oh, and this seems to mirror exactly the case of the schoolteacher who wouldn’t remove her head covering. It was argued that she was working in a public service job and her exercising religious conscience prevented her from doing aspects of her job. (I disagree that it stopped her being a good teacher, but that’s what was claimed.) She was sacked. Exactly the same argument applies here, except this time it’s Christianity so doctors get away with it.

Ultimately I think the test is in both cases if allowing workers to exercise their conscience freely has any impact on public service users. If so, it’s not acceptable. If a way can possibly be found that it doesn’t (and it’s the employer’s responsibility to find that way if it exists) then the worker should be given as much freedom as possible.