“patients have to interact with the medical environment in limited ways, including with, say, your primary care physician,” she says. “so when a primary care physician declines to provide certain kinds of expected medical care, it’s a much bigger deal than [a shopkeeper] deciding, ‘oh, we’re not going to stock that brand of toilet paper.'”
many patients “may not have the ability to simply go to some other provider, because they often require a referral to take advantage of other medical resources. and if they are unable to get that referral, they’re essentially just completely blocked.”
conscientious objections will render some controversial treatments harder to access than others, baba says. some religions might take issue with in-vitro fertilization, for instance, but it’s unlikely that a doctor morally opposed to ivf would specialize in fertility treatments. abortion services, on the other hand, are often performed in hospitals by general practitioners, who also perform a wide range of other medical services, she explains. it could be easier for those doctors to opt out.
“when it comes to abortion, there are different types of political strategies to restrict access,” baba says. “one of them would be this type of protection for conscience rights, and other one is refusing funding to specialized clinics. this conscience rights protection, it’s just another strategy.”