Conscience and Human Dignity

Sean Murphy, administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project, has responded to my call for a market-based approach to the pharmacist controversy.  Drawing on the work of Jacques Maritain, he concludes that the state should intervene in the market not to protect access (as I suggest), but to protect conscience:

Professor Vischer is correct to insist that problems of access to drugs should be left to the marketplace (which is competent to manage the distribution of goods and services), while acknowledging the duty of the state to intervene when and to the extent necessary to ensure that minimal human needs are met. However, deprivation of freedom of conscience is a fundamental injustice, and justice is the primary concern of the state. Thus, the state acts completely within its proper sphere of competence when it intervenes to the extent necessary to protect the dignity of the human person by enacting protection of conscience legislation.

Rob