Project Publications
Reports
Service, not Servitude
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)]