Protect Health Care Workers, Legislate Conscience?

If you’re morally opposed to performing a certain task at work, could you be protected by law not to have to do that task? Late last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced plans to implement a regulation designed to protect health care workers who are against abortion from being forced to deliver services that violate their personal beliefs. The rule empowers federal health officials to pull funding from health care providers if they do not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care they find objectionable on personal, moral or religious grounds.

Naturally, the first to cry foul are pro-abortion rights groups. Politics aside, however, pondering this new legislation brings up some questions. For example, why would a health care worker take a job where procedures they opposed were being performed? Does the regulation mean a health care worker can actually refuse to provide or refer a patient to care elsewhere for the care that violates their beliefs.. and does that violate the Hippocratic Oath?

What if this proposed regulation applied to other industries? Could a vegetarian waiter or waitress opt out of serving meat to customers? Or should that server simply find work in a vegetarian restaurant? Does this regulation give additional support to conscientious objectors who seek not to fight in a war because of their personal, moral, or religious grounds?

Perhaps protecting certain beliefs is not something that should be addressed at work at all. When we go to work, we effectively “sell” our skills—for money--to our employer. Part of this transaction is that we obey the policies and procedures of that workplace regardless of how we feel about them. If we don’t like it, we can seek employment elsewhere.