Avoiding Moral Mine Fields

This quote is taken from the most recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine - April 2009.  It is an excerpt from an editorial entitled Conscientious Objection Gone Awry - Restoring Selfless Professionalism in Medicine by Dr. Julie Cantor MD JD.  It is a criticism of the legislation enacted by GW Bush during the late stages of his administration to protect conscience in health care.  I'm particularly struck by this portion of the article where Dr. Cantor all but tells medical professionals with moral opposition to certain medical practices that "if you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen"

As the gate-keepers to medicine, physicians and other health care providers have an obligation to choose specialties that are not moral mine-fields for them. Qualms about abortion, sterilization, and birth control? Do not practice women’s health. Believe that the human body should be buried intact? Do not become a transplant surgeon.  Morally opposed to pain medication because your religious beliefs demand suffering at the end of life? Do not train to be an intensivist.  Conscience is a burden that belongs to the individual professional; patients should not have to shoulder it.

Translation - "You can't push your morals on me, and don't try to push them on your chosen profession either"  Clearly there are several negative repercussions if we are to take Dr. Cantor's statement  seriously - least of which being the systematic deprivation of care to patients who are seeking treatment from physicians with whom they are morally like minded.  The "moral mine field" remains so until the "moral mine" demolition experts carefully dismantle the explosives and cautiously dispose of the dangerous material.   The mine field does not miraculously become a pasture of clover because you ban the demolition team from working there, it just becomes more difficult to see the mines when no one is there to point them out for you.