Health Care Providers’ Consciences and Patients’ Needs: The Quest for Balance

Abstract

Recent controversies, such as the HHS rule on insurance coverage of contraceptive and sterilization services, raise fundamental and politically consequential questions. But they take place against a backdrop of longstanding tensions between claims of conscience and laws of broad scope and application—tensions well-known to experts but less so to public officials and most citizens.

In a new paper, William Galston and Melissa Rogers provide a broad overview of conscience from a religious, philosophical and legal perspective, and then home in on conscience in the context of health care. The paper surveys current federal and state law and regulation governing the right to conscientiously object in the provision of health care, and explores the ongoing tensions between claims of conscience and calls for access. The paper concludes with suggestions for policymakers when shaping laws and regulations in this arena.