Caution: conscience is the limb on which medical ethics sits.

conscientious refusal. However, the fact that there is a non-zero probability of something immoral happening is not all we can know about a given situation, and certainly not all the conscientiously-objecting pharmacist can know about the use of EC. We can know that the immoral thing is more or less likely to occur — often our approximation will be considerably more specific than merely non-zero. We can know whether or not the immoral thing is intended, by whom, and for what reasons. We can know whether the immoral thing is a more or less direct causal result of the professional’s actions. We can know that the immoral thing is a more or less seriously wrong. We can know roughly on a scale whether the immoral thing is widely understood as such or whether it is uniquely understood that way by the individual professional. Each of these is necessary for evaluating the reasonableness of the professional’s refusal to participate. In fact, we assume there are other categories relevant to the comprehensive ethical evaluation of contributing to an unethical act. It seems clear from these observations that Card (2007) uses the zero probability argument as a bit of a straw man. The conscientious objector does not rely on such a simplistic claim. In fact, conscientious objection can and should be evaluated in light of a variety of components, rather than the mere possibility that one’s actions will contribute to an unethical result. Specifically, conscientious objection appears to be made more plausible by a variety of factors, including the likelihood, intentionality, causal directness, degree of consensus, and not least, the severity of the unethical action.