id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cord-347268-vb6z0hzb	Wicclair, Mark R.	Is conscientious objection incompatible with a physician’s professional obligations?	2008-08-28		.txt	text/plain	6530	277	39	Several accounts of the professional obligations of physicians are explored: general ethical theories (consequentialism, contractarianism, and rights-based theories), internal morality (essentialist and non-essentialist conceptions), reciprocal justice, social contract, and promising. 4 In any event, the admission that a balancing of interests is required to determine a physician's obligations suggests that it is mistaken to believe that a general duty to treat despite conscience-based objections is derivable from an essentialist conception of the internal morality of medicine. To be sure, the general duty to ''maintain fidelity to the interests of the individual patient'' might be specified to prohibit conscience-based refusals to provide legal and professionally permitted medical services. 7 A traditionalist account of the internal morality of medicine would support the incompatibility thesis only if there is a time-honored moral tradition within the medical profession that physicians have a duty to provide medical services that violate their moral or religious beliefs.	./cache/cord-347268-vb6z0hzb.txt	./txt/cord-347268-vb6z0hzb.txt