Project Book Reviews

Conflicts of Conscience in Health Care: An Institutional Compromise
Holly Fernandez-Lynch
Cambridge, Mass:The MIT Press 2008

• Sean Murphy*  |. . .[the author] is seeking a compromise that will provide "maximal liberty for all parties." She believes that freedom of conscience for physicians and the provision of legal medical services are both important social goals, and that they are not incompatible. . . . However, it is necessary to acknowledge what the author herself admits. In her view, the heart of the conscience clause debate is patient access to services. She has written a book about how to help patients obtain services when some of the gatekeepers who control access to them are uncooperative. It is not a book about freedom of conscience. . . .
  [Fulll text]

Health Care Providers' Consciences and Patients' Needs: The Quest for Balance
William A. Galston and Melissa Rogers
Brookings Institution, Governance Studies, 23 February, 2012.

• Sean Murphy*  |. . .It is probably impossible to divorce the dispute about the legitimacy of services and the legitimacy of the exercise of freedom of conscience if one begins with the conclusion that contested services are health services (thus, legitimate) and that participation in perceived wrongdoing is the norm, at least for health care workers. This inversion gives the entire report an orientation subtly but decidedly adverse to the exercise of freedom of conscience in health care . . .
  [Full text (The Importance of Orientation)]