To take stock fully of conscience's relational dimension and its implications for the law, we must explore what that dimension means for our treatment of the most important relational venue in the lives of most people – the family. This exploration is by no means straightforward or obvious, for the marketplace model that has shaped this book's recommendations in other areas is of limited applicability when it comes to the family. Put simply, how should we view conscience's relational dimension in a venue where we have traditionally functioned more as members than as choosers? To the extent that the law empowers individual family members to function more as choosers, what are the implications for conscience?

One possible implication is an expanded state role to protect those deemed incapable of choosing the moral commitments imposed on them by those exercising authority within the family. Consider the recent well-publicized government raid of the Yearning for Zion ranch associated with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Texas. Acting on an anonymous telephone call reporting that a 16 year-old girl named Sarah was being physically and sexually abused at the ranch, the state removed 463 children from their parents despite failing to locate “Sarah.” A state agency would not typically enter and remove all children from their families in a population the size of a small town absent some particularized and substantiated allegations of serious abuse.