Robin Fretwell Wilson Archives - Protection of Conscience Project Library

Cameron Flynn, Robin Fretwell Wilson

American Medical Association Journal of Ethics

Extract
It appears, at times, that health care and religion do not mix. Consider the sterilization and contraception coverage mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The mandate requires nearly all employers and health insurers to cover as “essential health care services” certain sterilization procedures and contraceptives, including emergency contraceptives. Members of the Catholic, evangelical Christian, Mennonite, and Muslim faith communities say that the mandate places them “in the untenable position of having to choose between violating the law and violating their consciences.”

Flynn C, Wilson RF. Institutional conscience and access to services: can we have both? Virtual Mentor. 2013;15(3):226-235. doi: 10.1001/virtualmentor.2013.15.3.pfor1-1303.

Robin Fretwell Wilson

Extract
Refusals by individual pharmacies and pharmacists to fill prescriptions for emergency contraceptives (“EC”) have dominated news headlines. . .These refusals. . .reflect moral and religious concerns about facilitating an act that would cut-off a potential human life.

Recently, conscience-based refusals have ballooned far beyond EC. Pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control, and other ancillary care professionals are asserting their own conscience concerns.

Conclusion
Ultimately we must decide as a community whether we prize access more highly than religious freedom. The older healthcare conscience clauses offer us a range of methods to manage the clash between competing moral interests. If urgency for the service cannot be achieved through better information, state legislatures could make a number of choices. They could choose not to burden the professional’s choice at all—prizing religious liberty more highly than access. They could force providers to provide every service legally requested—prizing patient access more highly than moral or religious freedom. Or they could choose to allow individuals of conscience to exempt themselves up to the point that it creates a hardship for the patient or employer. In a pluralistic society, a live-and-let-live regime like this may be the most we can hope for.

Wilson RF. The Limits of Conscience: Moral Clashes Over Deeply Divisive Healthcare Procedures. Am J Law Med. 2008 Mar 01;34(1):41-63.