But, equally, many doctors' groups are likely to resent any ruling that sees religious views take precedence.
If a few do believe that religious injunctions take precedence over temporal laws, so also do some Christians (in America, the Balkans, Northern Ireland), some Hindus (in secular, democratic India) and some Jews (in democratic Israel).
In 2005, twelve cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, igniting a political firestorm over demands by some Muslims that the claims of their religious faith take precedence over freedom of expression.
At schools in these insular communities, religious studies take precedence over basic education like math, languages, and science.
Those take precedence over religious obligations.
But over the following decades another form of religious Zionism came to precedence, inspired by the quasi-mystical writings of Abraham Isaac Kook, who was the chief rabbi of Palestine under the British Mandate in the 1920s and '30s.
The case will be studied closely by all faith groups, especially those who believe in a literal interpretation of scripture that, they claim, determines religious law must take precedence over law made by statute.
The study shows that custom often takes precedence over religious values, and that civil laws are compromised and settlements are made in the name of Pakhtoonwali1 customs, legal procedures, and Sharia,2 thus denying women their rights to hold land and enjoy the right to property.
Jews, with a thousand-year history in France, have always been intensely patriotic in upholding the values of La République; they have often been described as model citizens, accepting and conforming to the peculiarly French ideal of laïcité, which insists that the secular rules of the Republic take precedence over religious requirements.
These are symptoms of beliefs taking precedence over religious values of compassion or free-will or non-violence.
