Sometimes healthcare professionals conscientiously refuse to treat patients despite the patient requesting legal, medically indicated treatments within the professionals’ remit. Recently, there has been a proliferation of views using the concept of public reason to specify which conscientious refusals of treatment should be accommodated. Four such views are critically assessed, namely, those of Robert Card, Massimo Reichlin, David Scott, and Doug McConnell. This paper argues that McConnell’s view has advantages over the other approaches because it combines the requirement that healthcare (...) professionals publicly justify the grounds of their conscientious refusals of treatment with the requirement that those grounds align with minimally decent healthcare. This relatively restrictive approach accommodates conscientious refusals from minimally decent healthcare professionals while still protecting good healthcare, the independence of the healthcare professions, and the fiduciary relationships. (shrink)

This special issue of HEC Forum includes articles on a wide range of specific topics that make significant contributions to conscientious objection scholarship. In this commentary, it is not feasible to provide a comprehensive analysis of each of the articles; and I have not attempted to do so. Instead, for each article, I have selected specific issues and arguments on which to comment.