“Conscientious objection is not a staff privilege staff a tool to protect professional integrity.”

Twenty professors from different Schools in the Third seminar Professional Ethics organized by the Core Curriculum Institute at the University of Navarra. The meeting, held at the University of Navarra Museum, featured a presentation by Professor José López Guzmán, who focused his discussion paper the dilemmas posed by conscientious objection in the healthcare profession.

During his speech, López Guzmán argued that conscientious objection should not be understood as an ideological stance or an act of institutional confrontation, but rather as a legal instrument at the service of professional integrity. In this regard, he stressed that "conscientious objection is not a staff privilege staff a tool to protect the ethical consistency of the professional," insisting that its function is to resolve real moral conflicts within specific legal frameworks. Based on his academic and professional experience, he pointed out that objection should be considered as resource last resource, after exploring alternative scientific, organizational, or legal avenues that avoid direct conflict.

The speaker also speaker real cases related to the pharmaceutical and healthcare fields, in which conscientious objection has provided a legal solution to situations of high moral conflict, as well as the need for prudent and well-founded strategies when these cases reach the courts. He also distinguished between conscientious objection and so-called "scientific objection," arguing that in certain professional contexts, refusal can be based on strictly scientific criteria without the need to take the conflict to court.

The session concluded with a colloquium  which numerous questions were asked about the legal limits of objection, its place in codes of ethics, the management of objectors, and the role of the university as a space for ethical support for professionals. Among the topics discussed were the relationship between individual conscience and collective responsibility, peer pressure within professional environments, and the need for Structures for ethical counseling in the university setting.