Fox on Medical Disobedience

The conscience regime that governs American healthcare is broken. When physicians or pharmacists deny treatment by appeal to their heartfelt convictions, conscience laws in most states shield them from being fired or disciplined. In many, they can’t be held liable for malpractice or prosecuted for endangering patients, however badly they needed care, or serious the resulting harm. Refusers don’t even have to tell patients which procedures are medically indicated, let alone help them to access those options elsewhere. So long as refusers invoke conscience, they almost always go scot-free. There’s virtually no such protection for clinicians who have equally conscientious reasons to perform interventions that their employer or state rules out.

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