RELIGIOUS FREEDOM! Doctor refuses to care for lesbian couple's 6-day-old baby

[anvi]

As the parents in the story point out, the patient was the infant.  I fail to see how giving an infant a wellness exam should offend a physician's moral conscience.  

Yes, the treatment of infants necessarily includes council to their caregivers.  But council to the caregivers of an infant about her health can't reasonably be construed as tantamount to approving of the parents' lifestyle.  If that were justifiable grounds for the denial of medical care, the slope would get pretty slippery pretty quickly.

Nice to know the physician reached the conclusion through prayer though.  Obviously, the physician knows God's will quite well  The Gospels are, after all, filled with stories about how Jesus consistently refused to heal or help people he believed to be sinners.  He refused to speak to them face to face, he refused to develop relationships with them or their children.  He made no sacrifices of his own glory on their behalf.  None of that.

[anvi]

Good points, Ernest.  I'm glad you reminded me of all those texts where Jesus advised his disciples to stay away from those who didn't heed him.  I thought the direct advice Jeuss gave to people to sin no more was delivered after he healed them, but the point you make stands.  I appreciate the sound reminders of some of the reasons I abandoned Christianity and why I find libertarianism repugnant.  Thanks.

[anvi]

I guess direct legal sanctions can't be leveled for violating the Hippocratic Oath.  The original one, addressed to Apollo and the gang, is interesting; it says, among other things, that physicians are to act in a godly manner, are not to administer abortions, and should give financial assistance to their teachers should they be in need.  I'm glad we've made the modern versions a little different.

Anyway, though I'm aware the law often gives physicians some leeway to discriminate against patients, I don't agree with it.  I don't think professions should be different; I don't think the people who sell me toothpaste or repair the foundation in my house should have the legal right to refuse such services to me if they were homophobic and I were gay.  A physician's job is to attend to patients' physical health; if the perpetrator of an armed assault is shot by police and wheeled into the emergency room, I think physicians should be professionally obligated to treat their wounds despite whatever entirely reasonable objections they would have to the crimes of the wounded.  I think the same rule also applies to an adulterer who goes to the clinic for a checkup.  Unless it's part of the physician's professional duties to be a moral judge of the sexual preferences of their patients, then I don't think the doctor should be afforded the right to discriminate on these "moral" grounds.  If they can't be "professional" enough to sort out their occupational duties from their religious beliefs, then they should find a profession that doesn't require them to offend their own conscience, instead of being allowed to refuse me services on the basis of professionally irrelevant considerations.  On top of it all, this person refused to treat an infant because they didn't like what their parents were doing in the bedroom--beyond being "unprofessional," I think that's just colossally lame.

I've learned my lesson though.  I'm not Christian, so I'm going to desist from making moral objections on purported Christian grounds.  It's inadvisable and dishonest, so my bad.  I'll stick to my own standards.  Even when I was a believer, I probably was a rather poor one anyway.  Contrary to what was laid down in the Scriptures, as shown above, I always thought it was my job to serve people and God's job to judge them.  And I didn't think God liked it much when I tried to usurp his prerogatives.  Even then, had I thought, if I became a physician, that I was only obligated to treat people who lived like I did, wow, that would have struck me as profoundly strange.  But, given everything else that happened, I'm glad I left the "faith" behind; I wasn't suited for it at all.

[anvi]

Yeah.  So, for Jesus, healing is only for the faithful, and for those that "sin no more" if treated.  And so should it be for physicians who believe in him.  Got it.

[anvi]

Yeah, I'm really not buying the rapport thing; I suspect it's little more than an excuse.  How does "rapport" stand up in court as grounds for a denial of care?  Does this physician claim to have equal degrees of rapport with all the patients and patients' parents she works with?  Establishing a rapport with patients may or may not happen even when a physician renders services.  It's better if you have rapport with a physician, but you often don't.  The physician that did my heart surgery when I was 8 probably said two sentences to me, and didn't talk with my parents much either, but did a splendid job on a procedure which, in the long run, saved my life.  If a pediatric physician is able to give quality care to the child and sound health council to parents, the physician is fulfilling his or her professional responsibilities.  Whether a physician may like or dislike a patient, or a patient's parents, or approve of whom they marry, really should not be grounds for denial of care.  And the argument that other physicians are available begs the question entirely, IMO.  If one Wal-Mart in a town refuses to sell products to black customers, it's not ok just because there are two other Wal-Marts and three other department stores in town that will.  The real question is whether a physician has the right to discriminate in principle in a specific case.  The grounds for denial of care here were not the availability of other physicians or the general issue of "rapport."  This physician refused to treat an infant because the infant's parents were lesbians.  If that's permissible in one case, why not in more than one, and if it is permissible in more than one, why not in all?  Maybe the law doesn't work like that, I'm not a lawyer.  But I can't see it being anything other than straightforward discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.