Sean Murphy
Responding to Cantor, Julie D., Conscientious Objection Gone Awry – Restoring Selfless Professionalism in Medicine. N Eng J Med 360;15, 9 April, 2009
Extract
Judging from the title of her article, Professor Julie D. Cantor believes that “selfless professionalism” in medicine is being destroyed by health care workers who will not do what they believe to be wrong.
She also implies that Americans have access to health care only because health care workers are compelled to provide services that they find morally repugnant. At least, that is the inference to be drawn from her warning that health care “could grind to a halt” if a federal protection of conscience regulation were “[t]aken to its logical extreme.”
Such anxiety is inconsistent with the fact that religious believers and organizations have been providing health care in the United States for generations. If anything, this demonstrates that health care is provided to many Americans – and many of the poorest Americans – because of the commitment of health care workers to their moral convictions, not in spite of them.
Murphy S. Conscientious Objection: Resisting Ethical Aggression in Medicine [Internet]. Protection of Conscience Project (2009 Apr 17).