I think Avedon and Barbara are right to be suspicious about the lead of this Washington Post story:

When the dispatcher called, Stephanie Adamson knew this might be the run she had feared. But it wasn't until her ambulance arrived at the hospital and she saw the words "elective abortion" on the patient's chart that she knew she had to make a choice.

"I just got a sick feeling in my stomach," said Adamson, an emergency medical technician from Channahon, Ill.

Adamson called her boss to say she could not transport the patient to the other hospital where the procedure was scheduled.

"I just knew I couldn't do it. I've never been for abortion -- I've always been against it," Adamson said. "I was brought up in a Christian home and always believed life was precious."

Adamson's supervisor fired her on the spot and dispatched another ambulance to transfer the distraught young patient....

An ambulance for an elective abortion? Avedon and Barbara don't think that's plausible -- and I agree. I suspect Ms. Adamson's story and the truth don't exactly coincide.

But I want to talk about the rest of the article, which is about medical "conscience" issues in general:

...Pharmacist Gene Herr was fired by a drugstore in Denton, Tex., in 2004 after refusing to fill a rape victim's prescription for the morning-after pill.

"This was the worst-case scenario," Herr said. "This was the hardest decision I ever made. The heinousness of a rape is a horrible thing. But I don't think you should punish a child for the sins of the father."

Fertility specialist James D. Madden, a Catholic, will treat only married couples using their own sperm and eggs.

"I believe the optimal circumstances for a child is to have a mother and a father. They contribute different things to the offspring," said Madden, of the Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas....

May I just point out the contradiction between those last two examples (if the rape victim was unmarried, or was married and had a husband who didn't want to raise his wife's rapist's child as his own)? Yes, I know it was two different practitioners who raised objections, but large numbers of American religious conservatives make both arguments without ever seeing a conflict between the two.

But add these to the other examples cited in the article (e.g., a Catholic anesthesiologist who won't participate in elective sterilizations) and it seems possible that we're headed toward a two-tier medical system -- red and blue -- in which many services simply won't be available in non-coastal, non-big-city America.

(Yet whenever I think that doctors and nurses and ansthesiologists and pharmacists should just shut up and do whatever they're asked to do, I remember that if a medical explanation of homosexuality is ever pinpointed, right-wingers are going to try to pioneer all sorts of "reparative" treatments for children, or possibly even fetuses. Alas, I can't completely dismiss "conscience" clauses -- we may need 'em too someday.)