Thanks to a wonderful discussion on conscience below, I am coming to the conclusion that the debate about conscience ultimately can be reframed as a debate about the medical profession.The key proposition is that medicine ought not be defined in a way that mandates (or more strongly even permits) intentional killing. The reason abortion ought not to be required of pro-life doctors even in a pro-choice society is that they believe, reasonably, that abortion is a type of intentional killing of a human being.When I teach a course on End-of-Life-Issues, one of the articles I assign is Leon Kass's "Neither for Love nor Money: Why Doctors Must Not Kill." What do you think of his arguments?