Samvetsfrihet versus rätten till abort

Freedom of conscience and religion are both protected rights under the European Convention, though only the freedom of religion is a protected right under national Swedish law. The right to conscientious objection, on the other hand, is not a protected right according to national Swe-dish law. Conscientious objection is not completely unusual in abortion care, where individuals wish to not participate in such care for religious or conscientious reasons. In the spring of 2017 a case was settled in the Swedish Labour Court, which concerned a midwife who was denied employment because she refused to participate in abortions, due to her religious beliefs. She believes that her freedom of conscience and religion in art. 9 ECHR have been violated and that she is exposed to such discrimination as found in both art. 14 ECHR as in the Swedish discrimination law. The aim of the paper is to highlight the conflict between the midwifery's right to conscien-tious objection and a woman’s right to a safe abortion. This conflict is looked at from a labour law perspective in order to be able to investigate to what degree an employer may make re-strictions in relation to his employees’ conscientious and religious freedom. I come up with the conclusions that there is an opportunity for employers to restrict the freedom of conscience and religion of its employees, that a woman's right to abortion takes prec-edence over an individual's conscientious and religious freedom and finally that Sweden probably does not violate European law.