The growing phenomenon of the persecution of physicians who refuse to participate in controversial medical procedures is part of a quiet, sinister and co-ordinated insurgency in Western medicine. Doctors have traditionally enjoyed a reasonable degree of informal autonomy when it comes to abstaining from the small—but rapidly expanding—number of morally hazardous interventions. Participation in “end of life” procedures such as abortion, euthanasia and, more recently, in the life-altering transformations of gender “reassignment” has, until now, been left largely to individual discretion. But with the introduction of new laws and updated codes of professional conduct, there is very little remaining latitude…