We live in morally polyglot times, and it is tearing us apart. These moral divisions are particularly acute in health care. Many want to harness the skills of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others not just to heal and prevent actual diseases, but to end human life, better effectuate life goals, and modify bodies to accord with mental states.
As a consequence, powerful societal voices insist that doctors (and other medical professionals) are professionally obligated to perform virtually every legal health-care procedure or other service in their fields requested by a patient — or find a doctor who will — even when the professional objects as a matter of conscience because the request would constitute the taking of human life, as in abortion and assisted suicide/euthanasia.
