When patient autonomy became a closely held value in medical ethics in the 1960s and '70s, the physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to deliver a given service began to be contested.
Both bans on unhealthful foods and warning label requirements face strong legal opposition from industry and ignite furious public debate about the role and limits of government intervention in American lifestyles.
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.
The most controversial component of the ACA has arguably been the mandate that group health plans cover contraception costs, which has elicited backlash from religious and conservative groups who believe it violates certain employers' religious freedoms.
If employees of religious institutions whose consciences conflict with those of their employers were to be granted legal protection for positive claims of conscience, the religious freedom of institutions within which they work would be gravely compromised.
Navajo students whose beliefs forbid them from touching dead bodies need not forgo pursuing careers in medicine; some medical school administrators are teaching anatomy without cadavers.
Doctors and hospitals must stop being bystanders to food-related illness and begin to become role models and educators in the transition to healthful eating habits, just as they did in tobacco cessation.