Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Medicine: Doctors denied artificial insemination because of religion

The latest in the saga. Fundamentally, the question arises about whether a doctor can treat based on his or her own religious beliefs. Which is sticky.

The biggest crock of shit is that these docs waste eleven months and who knows how much out-of-pocket cash, only to say, "Woops! We can't inseminate you, because you're a piece of shit lesbian and we think you having a child is evil. Sorry we didn't mention this back before you cashed in your life's savings, but ya know, the church needed a new charter bus to take old people to craft festivals. I'm sure you understand."

Not that I particularly think that a doc should have to treat someone against their religious beliefs. But the way of dealing with the issue is not to discriminate against patients, or to deny standard of care procedures and medications. The way to deal with this issue is to tell doctors that if they can't do a job because of their religious beliefs, they should go do something else. If you're a fertility doc, and you can't do your job because Pastor Bob says you're bad if you do what medically you're obligated to do, then you better not be a fertility doc.

If that means that there aren't any Christian or Islamic or Jewish fertility docs, then tough shit. I'm sure the pagans and feminists can hold down the fort just fine.

2 comments:

Kyle said...

Bizarre. So why aren't they bringing another doctor into the clinic to do it? It certainly sounds like the clinic wasn't working with the woman in good faith from the start.

Garrett said...

The "good faith" issue certainly seems to be the double entendre of the whole situation :)