From a "news journal of Catholic opinion"
The first explicit example of conscience is to be found in ancient Greece in Sophocles' female character, Antigone. When faced with the choice between obeying a royal command to leave her brother unburied, on the one hand, and flouting the king’s authority, on the other, Antigone does what she considers to be right after careful deliberation.
Like Sophocles' Antigone whose personal morality turns a kingdom on its head, women who seek birth control or abortion services cannot be ignored, contends Daniel A.Dombrowski, a professor of philosophy at Seattle University in this article, The Heart of the Matter: A Very Brief History of Conscience.
The author traces the origin of conscience (ancient Greece) and the trajectory it has taken with the help of Martin van Creveld's Conscience: A Biography, as compass.
One passage that is particularly noteworthy and relevant
to the present times is on how civil disobedience differs from conscientious refusal. To put in a nutshell, in civil
disobedience, one breaks some particular law out of respect for law in general.
By way of partial contrast, in conscientious refusal it is the government that
initiates a confrontation with a citizen by commanding her to do something that
violates her deepest moral convictions.
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