charismatic megafauna since 1985

A Matter of Conscience

My grandmother sent me this editorial from the Catholic Standard asking for people to comment against Obama’s rescinding of the “provider conscience rule”. This rule lets medical providers (from doctors all the way down to the pharmacist at your grocery store) decline to perform any service which violates their conscience. It was introduced by Bush at the end of his presidency, but it’s been halted for review under Obama.

We talked about this issue a bit when she called on my birthday, but I’ll say just a little more here. It’s easy to see the world-view where this is a good idea. Why should the government force people to do things that are against their conscience? But a quick substitution shows why this is a bad idea. Instead of being focused on the belief that contraception and abortion are ending a human life, let’s assume that it’s focused on something else, the belief the germ theory of disease. It’s absurd to let a doctor refuse someone’s TB with drugs because they believe that some nice cool air will relieve the symptoms. It’s crazy to have my local pharmacist refuse to give me some antibiotics because I really should be doing some bloodletting. And it’s no less absurd crazy to have someone in the medical field forcing a woman to not have a procedure that would safe her life.