Professional Ethics and Individual Conscience

I appreciate Eduardo's point about the relevance of professional standards to the interplay between an individual provider and the state.  These standards, however, do not seem to be having much impact, much less a dispositive impact, on the pharmacist debate.  The American Pharmaceutical Association supports "the individual pharmacist's right to exercise conscientious refusal and supports the establishment of systems to ensure patient access to legally prescribed therapy without compromising the pharmacist's right of conscientious refusal."  Granted, a statement of support for conscience is different than the AMA's explicit prohibition on certain conduct, but it still warrants deference that has not been afforded it (at least in Illinois and Massachusetts). 

To be clear, I do not support a legal right of conscience for individual pharmacists, but I fully support the integration of faith with professional identity as long as one does not expect the integration to be costless.  And I welcome an active mediating role for professional associations in staking out moral claims on behalf of their members and in resisting efforts by the state to trump those claims.  I just hope that such associational claims will be given the same deference when they create tension with our embrace of unfettered autonomy for the individual consumer as when they are arrayed against state power.

Rob