ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates and defends the favored social policy used to deploy the Reasonability View: establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. It begins by discussing the context of military conscientious objector status and distinguishing this from the context of medicine. Creating a medical conscientious objector board provides a venue for hearing and assessing the grounds of conscience claims in medicine, and the multidisciplinary members of this board would determine if a petitioner’s claim warrants an accommodation based on the conditions for reasonability defended earlier in this book. It is argued that this policy is advantageous since it is a proactive measure that aims to prevent crises of conscience in advance of the clinical encounter. Further, it provides a concrete outcome that can be relied upon by exempted professionals and is a public designation that is discoverable by others. Establishing a website detailing the accommodations extended allows patients to avoid providers who will not provide the service they desire and empowers exempted medical professionals to make effective patient referrals to other willing practitioners. Various theoretical and practical objections are addressed, and the chapter concludes that this policy proposal is both attractive and workable.
