All of our freedoms really come down to one very basic question, which is, should the state ever have the right to take away our freedom of conscience, or is the state created so as to assure individuals that their freedom of conscience will never be abridged. While certainly there may indeed come times when in even the most liberal of states, such as America with its Constitution, in which freedom of conscience will be at loggerheads with state needs or laws, this then represents the true test of how much freedom of conscience an individual does or does not have, and no state should lightly take away one's conscientious beliefs, for to do so, can easily devolve into a state of tyranny.
For instance, a soldier given an order to perform an act of questionable morality, or a police officer under instructions to shoot into a defenseless crowd of bystanders, cannot and should not be permitted to argue in a court of law, that they did what they did, because they were dutiful agents of the state following orders from their superiors, and thereby be excused from any punishment. The problem with this type of reasoning is twofold, one in which the perpetrators of the crime argue that they have a duty to obey orders, without questioning the morality or true legality of such, which consequently makes it far easier for this type of injustice to be perpetrated again and again, in addition to the fact, that it should not be an appropriate or defensible excuse to lay the blame on one's superiors, for to do so, negates an individuals' responsibility to answer for their own actions, which have caused wrongful harm.
This means, that each of us is gifted with a freedom of conscience that therefore our highest duty to that conscience is to do right, especially when doing right prevents a wrong, even if having done right by an act of conscience, might consequently result in something that could well be debilitating to that person who performed that righteous act. This clearly means that to do wrong, when you know that something is wrong, cannot be morally justified as the correct act to do, just because it may subsequently involve deleterious results for yourself.
It must be said that the whole point of freedom of conscience, is to have the freedom to do right in obedience to that conscience, yet, individuals each and every day, clearly know that they are doing wrong and do so quite willingly anyway. It cannot be emphasized enough that the greatest freedom for mankind is to know what they ought to do at any given time, whether that individual thereby chooses to do what they ought to do, is something that ultimately only they can answer to or for. Each of us is born with a freedom of conscience, in which, there are those whom drown it out with drugs and drink, some with bad company, some ignore the voice, some hear it but obey it only erratically, and some whom are unerring in their obedience to it. That freedom of conscience that each of us has is inalienable and gifted to us by our Creator, and should under no circumstances be breached by the state or its agencies.