Bishop John Keenan of the diocese of Paisley in Scotland has condemned his nation’s “culture of death” after two Catholic midwives lost a conscience case in the Scottish Supreme Court.

Reacting to the court’s rejection of the previously upheld right of midwives to opt out of any stage of an abortion procedure, Bishop Keenan described the ruling last week as oppressive to human freedoms.

“The decision handed down is that of an old and tired establishment that has run out of ideas and vision about how to bring about a brighter and better future for our people,” he charged. “Having committed itself to supporting a culture of death in the past generation it now sees that to preserve this culture into the next generation it must become an oppressor of the basic human freedoms of its citizens. Ironically this is done, in the name of being pro-choice and ends in an intellectual bankruptcy plain for all to see.”

The midwives’ case arose via a challenge taken by nurses Mary Doogan and Concepta Wood in 2013. Having refused to participate in the treatment of women before or after having an abortion on the grounds that this facilitates abortion, the Catholic nurses took their case to the Court of Sessions towards upholding their conscience rights. They secured victory, but then faced a challenge in the Supreme Court launched by the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

In examining the case, the court subsequently ruled that participation in an abortion must be defined as a ‘hands on’ act alone, meaning helping out with the abortion itself, and the right of medical staff to opt out on conscience grounds was confined to that act. The court also rejected the claim by nurses Doogan and Wood that their freedom of religion, under the Human Rights Act, had been breached.

Bishop Keenan decried the ruling as one “forcing nurses who had trained to deliver babies to become involved in medically killing them”.