Today's medical students have an important role in ethical care for the dying because their role involves having conversations with patients about their experiences and values.
Because physicians are the gatekeepers to end-of-life care services and their referral patterns vary, those patterns are worthy targets for intervention.
Qualifying conscience protections for institutions with requirements that they minimize hardship caused to the patient would prevent religious institutions from acting as a choke point on the path to services.
Julian Savulescu's writing on conscientious objection is guided by an emphasis on the principle of distributive justice that does not allow religion to have a special status as justification.