Conscience at Guantanamo

Relating to our conversation on conscience in the military, Kim Daniels of the Thomas More Law Center sends along a reminder that a physician in today's American military may face clashes of conscience that have nothing to do with abortion or birth control:

[One of our clients was a] Catholic OB/GYN serving as a lieutenant in the Navy, he originally sought our help crafting an accommodation that would allow him to continue to serve as a Navy doctor without having to write prescriptions or perform procedures that violated his conscience.  Several years later, I got a call from him again: he was now about to be transferred to Guantanamo as a general practitioner, and there expected to be called upon to supervise the use of feeding tubes on hunger-striking prisoners, something that he viewed as a violation of their human dignity and thus barred by his faith.

Fortunately for him, the transfer to Guantanamo never came through. But he's now out of the Navy practicing as a GP; I'm sure the conflicting lines of authority that he faced had much to do with that switch.