Conscience in America: The Slippery Slope of Mixing Morality with Medicine
![handle is hein.journals/swulr36 and id is 91 raw text is: CONSCIENCE IN AMERICA: THE
SLIPPERY SLOPE OF MIXING MORALITY
WITH MEDICINE
I. INTRODUCTION
Imagine you are dining at your favorite steak house and you order a
steak, medium rare. Your waiter, a practicing Hindu, informs you that it is
against his religion to serve beef, and he will not take your order.' Is this
waiter protected by religious discrimination laws? No, of course not. It
would be absurd to require the steak house to continue to employ a waiter
who refused to serve steak.2 Now, imagine you go to your doctor, an
Ob/Gyn, to request birth control. Your doctor, a practicing Catholic,
informs you that it is against his religion to prescribe birth control, and he
will not write you a prescription. Is this doctor protected by religious
discrimination laws? The answer to this question is unclear. In some states
this doctor is protected by a conscience clause and has the right to refuse to
write the prescription.4 Assuming that your doctor did write the
1. The Hindu religion, like others, has specific dietary requirements:
People who practise [sic] the Hindu religion don't eat meat from animals. They also avoid
foods that may have caused pain to animals during manufacture. 'Karma' is believed to be
the spiritual load we accumulate or relieve ourselves of during our lifetime. Animals are
believed to have spiritual awareness. If a Hindu consumes animal flesh, they accumulate the
Karma of that act - which will need to be balanced through good actions and leaming in this
life or the next. Depending on the level of adherence to this belief, in many cases beef is
forbidden, while pork is sometimes restricted or avoided.
Better Health Channel, Food Culture and Religion (Oct. 2005),
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/(Pages)/Food-culture-and religion?Ope
nDocument (last visited Aug. 7, 2006).
2. See Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, 432 U.S. 63, 73-74 (1977) (noting that the
legislative intent behind the enactment of the 1972 amendments to Title VII of the Civil Rights
Act was to make it unlawful for an employer to refuse to reasonably accommodate an employee's
religious belief, unless that accommodation would be an undue hardship to the employer).
3. Catholics believe that [c]ontraception is wrong because it's a deliberate violation of the
design God built into the human race, often referred to as 'natural law.' The natural law purpose
of sex is procreation. Catholic Answers, Birth Control,
http://www.catholic.com/library/Birth Control.asp (last visited Aug. 7, 2006).
4. Eight states - Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maine, Mississippi, Tennessee, and](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/swulr36&div=9&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Conscience in America: The Slippery Slope of Mixing Morality with Medicine
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