Many medical doctors (persons with legal authority to prescribe drugs) and pharmacists (persons with legal authority to dispense drugs) object to capital punishment, and thus will not supply prisons with drugs that have the sole purpose of killing someone.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/19/death-penalty-b...
It's pretty crazy that drug companies are more ethical than telecoms. Especially considering all the problems with reproducability that we're seeing on the cancer treatment front and plummeting drug effectiveness.
The US company that used to make them "suspended production because it was suffering commercially as a result of having its drug connected to executions," not exactly based on moral principles.
There's also the difference that telecoms have (if secret) court orders mandating them to do so, while drug companies only have a few sales to lose (even at the peak of 300+ executions/year, it's probably not a very lucrative business).
Also, allowing people to opt out on supplying the drug on matters of conscience is a slippery slope. What about letting people opt-out of providing abortions? Or marrying gay couples? A case could made for people refusing to do these as matters of conscience as well.
There also numerous reasons to be against the death penalty but not abortions, but something tells me I'd rather not have this discussion here and now [1].
[1] for what it's worth, an example not related but relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770221
If you bake a cake for a gay couple, you are part of a chain of actions that sort of, kind of, indirectly might offend your sensibilities.
Those two outcomes are vastly dissimilar - equating them because they are both "doing things you object to as a matter of conscience" is too reductionist by half.
But even the magnitude cutoff is arbitrary. At which point is the result "bad enough" that ethical reservations start to apply?
Yes, because you want politics on HN, but only the politics you agree with. All political articles should be flagged.
On what do you base this assertion? It's not like the parent poster submitted this article.
As I obviously need to spell it out to you:
- Some people's belief systems are against Gay Marriage
- Some people's belief systems are against the Death Penalty
Which set of personal beliefs is valid? Who decides which one should be allowed?
But gay marriage is now legal in all states, so representatives of the states are obligated to perform those services. The clergy aren't representatives of those states and so they can refuse, without legal consequence, to perform services they object to.
The death penalty is legal in most states, so some one within that state is obligated to execute people, though they could potentially refuse (at the likely cost of their job, perhaps more). But a pharmacist, as a private party, is not obligated to sell the tools of execution to the state. It's their own choice.
Not always, at least not in the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-32065233
Again, not commenting for or against. I just think that the philosophical arguments of where freedom of conscience butts up against other people's rights is an interesting topic.
They already can to both your examples. No doctor (excepting, perhaps, military doctors stationed overseas, or so I've been told but not confirmed) can be forced to perform an abortion. Similarly, no member of the clergy is forced to marry gay couples. The only people required to do so, now, would be state officials (justice of the peace) whose job it is to perform weddings and who work for the public (rather than being part of a private, though religious, practice).
No doctor, hospital, or medical facility has _ever_ been forced into providing abortions. Ever. None.
> Or marrying gay couples?
No private organization has or ever will be forced to marry gay couples. Ever. None.
> A case could made for people refusing to do these as matters of conscience as well.
They don't have to make a case. They can just do it. Now. And forever.
In countries where assisted suicide is legal people just swallow a pill and go peacefully to sleep. Yet in the US there is this "crisis" of not being abel to source the injections needed.
Pets are also put down very easily with a single injection which makes them go to sleep and the heart beats slower and slower until it stops in a few minutes.