Conscience clauses are in the news lately in the USA. The term refers to the practice of allowing medical practitioners to refuse to perform certain procedures if they are in violation of their personal beliefs. For example, some pharmacists who are religious choose not to dispense the morning after pill.

There are two sides to the debate. One side holds that it is wrong to require people to act against their beliefs. This side typically favours the introduction of a law prohibiting employers from firing people who refuse to do their jobs on such grounds.

The other side argues that pharmacists’ conscience clauses make contraception harder to get and are therefore detrimental to women’s health. This side typically favours the introduction of a law requiring pharmacists to dispense all prescriptions no matter what their individual beliefs.

Like most political debates, it is a false dichotomy and both sides miss the glaringly obvious.

The solution is quite simple: Let those who want to sell contraceptives sell them. Let those who own pharmacies and who want staff willing to sell contraceptives hire such staff if they can find them. Let those who refuse to sell contraceptives refuse to sell them as long as they can find an employer who doesn’t mind such behaviour. Let those who want to buy contraceptives buy them, as long as they can find someone willing to sell them.

End of story: no-one is forcing anyone to do anything they don’t want to do; no laws need to be made; no taxpayers’ money needs to be wasted drafting laws; no politicians required.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 6:58 AM EDT

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The folks at NO2ID are trying to get 10,000 people to pledge to refuse to register for an ID card when (because, lets face it, it’s only a matter of time) they’re introduced. Good on ‘em, I say.

I’d already planned to avoid ID cards for as long as possible. At some point, no doubt, I will be forced into it, kicking and screaming. But the kicking and screaming is imortant. Like Hank Rearden at his trial in Atlas Shrugged, I want “to let the nature of this procedure appear exactly for what it is.” In other words, if people don’t kick and scream, it might appear as if they are going voluntarily to register for their ID cards; it might appear as if they have a choice. Rearden continued:

I will not help you to pretend that I have a chance. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognised. I will not help you to preserve an appearance of rationality be entering into a debate in which a gun is the final argument.

Rearden is talking about being compelled to defend himself in an illegitimate trial. But this is similar to being compelled to register for an illegitimate ID card:

If you choose to deal with men by means of compulsion, do so. But you will discover that you need the voluntary co-operation of your victims, in many more ways than you can see at present. And your victims should discover that it is their own volition — which you cannot force — that makes you possible. I choose to be consistent and I will obey you in the manner you demand. Whatever you wish me to do, I will do it at the point of a gun. If you sentence me to jail, you will have to send armed men to carry me there — I will not volunteer to move. If you fine me, you will have to seize my property to collect the fine — I will not volunteer to pay it. If you believe that you have the right to force me — use your guns openly. I will not help you to disguise the nature of your action.

And if they want to force us to register for ID cards, then let them force us. If enough of us refuse, we might just see that there are limits to their power: the whole scheme would, as NO2ID say, be doomed to failure.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 7:46 PM EDT

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On the radio I heard someone, it really doesn’t matter who, saying:

Everybody knows that the accident rate is very high for people who have recently passed their driving test, say in the last twelve or eighteen months, so clearly something must be done.

Everybody Knows X So Something Must Be Done is the mantra of inconsequential bores everywhere desperate to make themselves seem important. What’s sad is that there is a never ending supply of them, and no matter how hard everybody else tries to ignore them they actually succeed in gaining power by feeding off of one another in an evil coalition of campaigners, journalists and politicians.

It works because politicians choose to behave as if the media represents the views of the public, and the media chooses to behave as if campaigners represent the views of the public. In reality, nobody really cares apart from people trying to forge careers by acting as if they do.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 1:47 PM EDT

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