To participate in a lethal injection is to occupy the medical role and use medical training for a purpose that is not part of the goals of medicine and that harms the recipient of treatment.
With good planning and good will, medical professionals’ right of conscience and patients’ rights to controversial services can be both protected and accommodated.
A summary of the legal cases that have set precedence for the rights of physicians and surrogates when life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn from patients who cannot make the final decision for themselves.
A growing number of states is enacting laws to protect the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to perform certain services that are morally opposed to.