An examination of medical conscience in the US
An article in the Harvard Law Review analyzes the "long-simmering tension between law and medicine," examining how laws address and protect those who deny health services to patients based on conscientious refusal versus those who deliver services according to their conscience and moral obligation despite hospital or state restrictions on the care.
Part I spells out the meaning, significance, and history of conscience in United States healthcare. Part II charts the modern landscape of conscientious provision across more than a dozen restricted practices that clinicians invoke moral convictions to supply. Part III appraises the three strongest moral justifications for why our legal system comes down hard on anyone who conscientiously delivers these contested forms of care at the same time that it so zealously protects the person who conscientiously denies them. Part IV seeks to dislodge the refusal/provision divide that governs conscience clauses in American medicine."