"The outgoing Bush administration this week will finalize a regulation establishing a "right of conscience" allowing medical staff to refuse to participate in any practice they object to on moral grounds, including abortion but possibly birth control and other health care as well."
It is unconscionable that anyone engaged in enterprise such as pharmacy, nursing, anesthesiology, or anything involving health care should be forced to commit acts that are against his/her conscious.
But if we are to allow such professions to object on moral grounds, then the power of dispensing with health care needs to be given to those who can provide it without a bothered conscious.
The medical profession, from the least important, most replacable jobs in the industry, to board certified doctors, is not open to the layman. If my daughter cannot get birth control in the one-pharmacy town in which she lives, 14 miles from the next pharmacy, then she ought to be able to get them with out prescription.
Fat chance. But you see the issue, and you see that conscious cannot count in an area where only the licensed are allowed to even have such a conscious. Those out side of the licensed arena must not be allowed to be held hostage by monopoly. And the licensed professions are indeed a monopoly, though not of the sort normally thought of. They are a monopoly of educated, regulated, duty-bound individuals who are given the power to provide services and products which we, the general public, are not given open access to.
Since we do not have access to these services and products without the duty-bound licensed professionals, and since it is not against the law for us to procure them from these professionals--indeed, it is illegal to procure them without the professionals--then they cannot be allowed to let their conscience get in the way of their monopoly license.
The very fact that it is illegal for us to procure these services and products without the assistance of licensed professionals is what causes them to be "duty-bound." Ayn Rand was absolutely correct when she said: "The meaning of the term 'duty' is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest."
But she also said, "'Duty' destroys values: it demands that one betray or sacrifice one’s highest values for the sake of an inexplicable command..." “Causality Versus Duty,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 95
The privilege of having a licence is no "inexplicable command," so no values are destroyed by the prevention of choosing one's conscience over one's licenced privilege. Soldiers are duty-bound to protect the lives of their fellow soldiers; doctors are duty-bound to save lives whenever possible; airline pilots are duty-bound not to be drunk while flying. These are not inexplicable.
Is the use of the word "duty" to describe the requirements of licenced professionals the wrong word? Not when Rand is using it in the social sense, when the inexplicable duty "may demand the sacrifice of his values at any moment, wiping out any long-range plan or struggle he might have undertaken to achieve them . . . ."
If the struggle and long-range plan of a licensed professional is to prevent the products and services offered by capitalism and approved for use, then he must do so from outside the strict, lawfully defined terms of his position.
It is one thing to protest, to plan, to persuade, and otherwise to struggle to achieve the goals of one's life. It is another to use one's power to prevent others from achieving their goals. They ought not need to struggle against the very people licensed to provide them with their goals.
Stop Jihad In America Now
related
AIG and Sharia-Compliant Insurance
is financing jihadists' efforts to overthrow the governments of the western world. Read the article above to find out about the Federal suit brought against the Treasury Department to stop its traitorous efforts to be sharia-compliant so long as the long term goal of sharia is to overthrow the rest of the world--which has been 1400 years now, and counting.
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