re: #112 iceweasel

The fact remains that no one has proposed conscience clauses for any of your hypotheticals. Why is that? It’s pretty obvious.

Abortion and birth control and emergency contraception are legal. Doctors and pharmacists don’t get to decide after the fact that they won’t provide those services. If you don’t want to perform abortions, don’t be an ob/gyn. It’s simple.

And pharmacists should no more be granted a dispensation to avoid handing out birth control than they should be granted one for refusing to fill prescriptions for Ritalin for children, or Viagra for young men, or anti-depressants. It’s not their job.

I was asking that when you write the law the way you want it, do not say that the doctor may never exercise his or her conscience. Write it so that the doctor is only forced to leave conscience at the door when it comes to these specific things: abortion and birth control.

That’s still a bad law, but it’s less bad because it doesn’t outlaw doctors having a conscience across the board.