More on conscience

My post, a few days ago, about the Administration's new regulations regarding the conscience-rights of health-care workers sparked a lively debate over at Prawfsblawg.  For more on the subject, check out this short essay, "Aborting Conscience", by Robby George, over at Public Discourse.  A bit:

In its recent report on the role of conscience in medicine, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists discussed whether or not physicians should be allowed to follow their consciences in refusing to perform morally contested procedures like abortion. Perhaps most controversially, the report suggested that in some cases physicians should be compelled to perform abortions. Why is this problematic?

The first thing one notices about the ACOG Committee report is that it is an exercise in moral philosophy. It proposes a definition of conscience, something that cannot be supplied by science or medicine. It then proposes to instruct its readers on “...the limits of conscientious refusals describing how claims of conscience should be weighed in the context of other values critical to the ethical provision of health care.” . . .

In defending its proposal to compel physicians in the relevant fields to at least refer for procedures that physicians may believe are immoral, unjust, and even homicidal, the report said that such referrals “need not be conceptualized as a repudiation or compromise of one’s own values, but instead can be seen as an acknowledgement of both the widespread and thoughtful disagreement among physicians and society at large and the moral sincerity of others with whom one disagrees.”

So suddenly it’s the case that the underlying issues at stake, such as abortion, are matters of widespread and thoughtful disagreement, and I myself agree with that. And it becomes clear from the report that we should show respect for the moral sincerity of those with whom we disagree. But it seems to me that it follows from these counsels that thoughtful and sincere people need not agree that abortion, for example, is morally innocent or acceptable or that there is a “right” to abortion or that the provisions of abortion is part of good health care or is health care at all, at least in the case of elective abortions.

But then what could possibly justify the exercise of coercion to compel thoughtful, morally sincere physicians who believe that abortion is a homicidal injustice either to perform the procedure or make a referral for it, or else leave the practice of medicine? The report’s “my way or the highway” attitude is anything but an acknowledgement of the widespread and thoughtful disagreement among physicians and society at large and the moral sincerity of those with whom one disagrees. Indeed, it is a repudiation of it.