Abstract

This essay challenges the relevance of the primary analogy in Ronit Stahl and Ezekiel Emanuel’s article “Physicians, Not Conscripts: Conscientious Objection in Health Care.” The author then proposes an alternative, classi­cally inspired model of conscience based on the work of E. Christian Brugger, Edmund Pellegrino, and Alasdair MacIntyre. This teleological model enables a more robust analysis of conscience claims than does Stahl and Emanuel’s social-constructivist framework.