Which operations do you mean? Blood transfusions and transplants? If he does't believe in performing such operations perhaps he shouldn't be a surgeon. The government has a certain amount of leeway to regulate medicine and medical pratictioners. What if your pharmacist refuses to fill your prescription and you live 200 miles away from the next pharmicist? What if a pharmicist doesn't believe in prescription mood inhancers? Or anti-biotics--what if he's a homeopath? I see no reason why the government should not recquire pharmacists to fill out all legal prescriptions brought to them (if they practically can of course). If someone doesn't believe in birth control, I recommend fighting to illegalize it. But as long as it's legal, and can be prescribed by doctors, pharmacists--as members of the medical community--should be recquired to fill those prescriptions out.
So basically if you find birthcontrol pills objectionable you either a) can't be a pharmacist or
b) no one at all can have bcp?
I think the pharmacist should be able to follow his moral beliefs in this instance. With regard to the doctor example I posed, I take it your response is that the gov't should dictate to doctors what kind of medical procedures they perform or the medicines they proscribe. For example, if a Catholic doctor, or a Catholic hospital for that matter, doesn't want to prescribe birth-controll pills due to moral considerations, I take it you would favor compelling them to do so? What would your position be with regard to abortion or euthanasia (assuming it is made legal in states other than Oregan)?