The “Conscience Rule* debate
Posted on April 8th, 2009 by armineh
Last month President Obama proposed a rescission of a dangerous Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation that allows health care workers to impose their religious beliefs on their patients and impedes women’s access to vital health care services.
Filed under: Discussion
Paul:
It is simply unconscionable that patients - especially women - should be denied appropriate health care because of the biases of some health care workers.
Sandy:
My opinion is that a storefront (i.e., not just a firm, but all the locations where it provides services) should not be allowed to refuse such services, but an employee should be able to. That is, a firm needs to have on staff people who will provide the services in question at all times that they are open. But not everyone on staff must be willing to provide it.
I think freedom of religion should be applied to people, although not to firms.
Armineh:
Here is another question to consider: what would happen if a firm can only hire one person and this person’s religion does not allow him to provide this kinds of services? Should the employer not hire that person because their religious beliefs? Would what may be considered to be religious freedom (i.e. not being required to provide such services) turn out to be a case for religious discrimination?
Sandy, thanks for articulating a nuanced position. It makes is so much more interesting.
Ross:
I go back and forth on this issue. I can see Sandy’s point, and am willing to be persuaded, but I have a hard time seeing how that works out in every instance (like the one-man operation pointed out by Armineh).
The first time I remember seeing something along these lines was 3 or 4 years ago. In the St Paul/Minneapolis area, somehow, the taxi business has come to be dominated by Muslims. Many drivers would refuse passengers accompanied by dogs (considered unclean), or passengers in the possession of alcohol (even if bringing home wine from the grocery store). On the one hand, you can say that it is the driver’s prerogative to refuse business, and that the passenger is free to find another cab. On the other hand, when there are few other cabs willing to take those same passengers, then it poses a problem. And overall, the nature of the taxi business is to provide transportation to the public, so a cabbie who may often refuse passengers (for reasons of conscience) really isn’t performing the function of his/her job, and possibly should consider another line of work.
Armineh:
So, if I belong to a certain religion where we belief that people who are green are unclean, then I don’t have to allow them to sit in my cab for reasons of conscience. In this case it is not the practice of the person (e.g. carrying wine) that I will be discriminating against, but the person (who has a green colored skin).
Then the question is where do you draw the line?
Sandy:
My opinion is that I do not want to prevent employment for someone whose religion interferes with their profession, but I don’t care if it’s hard for them to get a job or if they have to take a pay cut in order for them to compete with others willing to do the whole job. So a pharmacy who hires just one pharmacist needs to get one who will do the entire job. They don’t need to ask about the person’s religious views, but they should be able to ask whether the
person will perform all aspects of the job, and then fire them if they have said yes but refuse to. I believe you can’t refuse a job to a small woman because of her gender (or maybe even because of her size) but you can refuse employment if the job requires a skill set she doesn’t have, such as lifting a 100 pound sack of something.
That being said, my position is only theoretical. I’m not sure whether it can be easily enough enforced to make it practical.