David Orentlicher (Law) recently published "Law, Religion, and Health Care," in the UC Irvine Law Review. He considers the extent to which physicians, hospitals, or employers should be able to deny patients access to abortion, aid-in-dying, or other care on grounds of religious conscience.
Orentlicher writes that religious objections should be relevant only to the extent that there are legitimate non-religious bases for refusing care. Thus, for example, physicians should be able to refrain from performing abortions or from providing aid-in-dying on religious grounds because one can view abortion or aid-in-dying as immoral on non-religious grounds. But if there are insufficient non-religious reasons for objecting to care, then religious objections also are insufficient. For example, since there is no legitimate secular basis for denying fertility services to same-sex couples, religious objections to providing fertility services should not be recognized.
While there can be circumstances outside of health care for recognizing religious beliefs that do not have a secular counterpart, it is difficult to identify a situation in which religious belief alone could justify the denial of beneficial care. Even when another person has a religious freedom interest, the state’s interest in protecting the health of its citizens outweighs the religious interest.
