But when actions that cause anger and frustration do interfere with doctors’ ability to meet their obligations to provide safe and effective treatment, refusing services can be ethical. For example, taking vaccination status into account is ethical when it’s intended to protect health care staff members and patients and to select patients for scarce ICU beds who have the best chances for survival.

Valentine’s explanation for what he’s doing, while perhaps understandable, isn’t defensible from an ethical point of view. According to news reports about a Facebook post he made, he said he decided not to treat unvaccinated patients because “Covid is a miserable way to die and I can’t watch them die like that.” While his reasoning expresses compassion, it seems to have more to do with sparing himself emotional pain than with protecting patients and staff members from infection. (NBC News hasn’t verified the authenticity of the post. Neither Valentine nor representatives at the medical clinic where he works provided comment.)