A common move in arguments against conscientious objection to participation in abortion, euthanasia, and assisted suicide is to treat conscience as a feeling.  Thus from the consequentialist’s view, the only drawback of, say, forcing a doctor whose conscience is opposed to abortion to carry one out anyway is that if he does so, he may feel bad, and he has a subjective “interest” in not feeling bad.  But according to this view, the feelings or “interests” of other people may be more important, because there are more of them.

This sort of argument fails to grasp what conscience is.  A conscientious objection to abortion isn’t just a plea that I will feel bad if I carry it out; it is a claim that I believe abortion to be intrinsically wrong, regardless of my feelings or anyone else’s.  An “intrinsic” wrong is one which cannot be made right by any consideration whatsoever.

True, if I do what I believe to be intrinsically wrong, I may suffer remorse or guilty feelings.  This doesn’t always happen, but even if it did, conscience isn’t ultimately about feelings, but about knowledge.  It doesn’t point inward, to how I feel, but outward, to the objective right or wrong of my act.  It can never be right to do what I believe is intrinsically wrong.