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Abortion is a very controversial and sensitive subject, with the world divided into two with opposing views on the practice, which many see as a crime.

According to a University of Michigan faculty member, Lisa Harris, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan Health System, doctors can be "conscientious" providers of abortion.

She says that there is both historical and contemporary evidence that conscience motivates abortion provision just as it does for doctors who do not conduct abortions; sociologist Carole Joffe's study shows how skilled mainstream doctors offered safe, compassionate care before Roe v. Wade, risking fines, imprisonment and loss of medical license, Medical Xpress reported.

"They did so because the beliefs that mattered most to them compelled it. They saw women die from self-inducted abortion and from abortions performed by unskilled providers," Harris writes.

According to Harris, even the doctors practicing contemporary medicine are motivated by conscience during abortion.

"Though today abortion providers work within the law, they still have much to lose, facing stigma, marginalization within medicine, harassment and the threat of (or actual) physical harm [...] However doctors [...] continue to offer abortion care because deeply-held, core ethical beliefs compel them."

Harris argues that if conscience-based abortion "refusals" are protected by federal and state laws, then why not conscience-based abortion "provision".

"If physicians who offer abortion don't have a legitimate claim to act in 'good conscience,' as do their counterparts who oppose abortion, then the implication is that they act in 'bad conscience' or lack conscience altogether," Harris writes.

Harris further says that "moral integrity can be injured as much by not performing an action required by one's core beliefs as by performing an action that contradicts those beliefs."

Harris, disagreeing with those who oppose abortion claiming that abortion providers work on motivation rather than conscience says, "certainly, if abortion providers' conscience-based claims require scrutiny, so do conscience-based refusals, to ensure that refusals are indeed motivated by conscience and not by political beliefs, stigma, habit erroneous understanding of medical evidence or other factors."

Apart from recognition of "conscientious provision" of care, Harris also calls for a standard curriculum and a standard of care for conscientious refusals, the report said.

The article was published on Sept. 13 in the New England Journal of Medicine.