Doctors are not obliged to refer a person to an alternate clinic to obtain services if it conflicts with their personal beliefs, Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal has ruled.

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On Wednesday, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the law obliging physicians, if they invoke the so-called conscience clause, to refer patients to an alternate facility is unconstitutional.

“Doctors cannot claim that the obligation to refer a patient [to another clinic] in case they refuse to perform certain medical services infringes on their conscience,” said Dorota Pudzianowska, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Warsaw and lawyer at the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in Poland’s capital.

Agnieszka Łaszczuk reports.