freedom? ugh!
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massach…
I don’t know what’s worse: that Scott Brown tried to weaken a law guaranteeing emergency contraception to rape victims, or that he now claims he can’t remember doing it…
In 2005, state lawmakers proposed a law requiring hospital workers to offer rape victims emergency contraception, and Brown supported it. But he also wrote an amendment that would have gutted the bill. His measure would have allowed any health care worker to opt out of the new law based on his or her beliefs. If that happened, the victim would then have to get emergency birth control from someone else at the hospital…
Oh noz! Brown supports freedom of conscience, and wouldn’t use the authority of the State to force people to violate their religious beliefs.
What is the world coming to !?!?!
By the way, it might just be me, but over the last six months or so it seems that the majority of the Globe’s comments are being written by people who loathe the left wing agenda.
Maybe the Globe is cool with that – more outrage means more page refreshes, means more ad revenue…
January 14th, 2010 at 11:56 am
Nice out of touch reporter.
Not only is abortion not on the list of top issues, the government forcing health care to provide things they morally object to is even lower down on the list.
She posits a situation where there is some rape victim in the ER and the staff takes care of the woman but is unwilling to supply an abortitficant. So not only are the nurse and the doctor unwilling to do it, but literally no one else in the hospital will. Thats dozens and dozens of people.
The writer wants the government to come between a woman and the judgement of an entire medical staff?
January 14th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
If your religious beliefs prevent you from performing the duties of a doctor or nurse in a country where patients have a legal right to emergency contraception, you’re free not to practice as a member of either profession.
If, on the other hand, you choose to take on the responsibilities of the profession, and allow yourself to be placed in an on-call position, your rights to cherry-pick all sorts of things have been forfeited. You don’t get to cherry-pick interventions to which the patient is legally entitled any more than you get to cherry-pick your patients.
This wouldn’t be an issue in a world without prescriptions or doctor/nurse licensure, but that’s not the world we live in (yet) and every provider knows that.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
The preceding comment is one of the best arguments against professional licensing I’ve seen.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
[quote comment="230028"]If your religious beliefs prevent you from performing the duties of a doctor or nurse in a country where patients have a legal right to emergency contraception, you’re free not to practice as a member of either profession.
[/quote]
You’re begging the question by assuming that killing fetuses is part of the “duties of a doctor or nurse”.
The debate is about whether the only way to run a civilized society is to force every single doctor and nurse to do that, or if there’s leeway.
I can turn your argument right around – “If your religious beliefs prevent you from performing the duties of a teacher (leading your class in a pledge of allegiance to both country and God) then you’re free not to practice as a member of the profession”.
Is pledging allegiance to God part of the core definition of what is required of teachers?
Or another example – if there are 20 people working in a lunch room, and one of them has an allergy to peanuts, is it acceptable for that one individual to avoid making peanut butter sandwhiches for the kids, and instead clean pots that day, or is it, again, a core duty of a lunch room worker to be exposed to peanuts?
January 14th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
[quote comment="230028"] You don’t get to cherry-pick interventions to which the patient is legally entitled any more than you get to cherry-pick your patients.[/quote]
First, “cherry picking” is an unfairly loaded term – we’re not talking about some employees taking just the 1 or 2% of cases that they really enjoy – we’re talking about them taking the 99.5% of cases that don’t contradict a fundamental teaching of their religion / a fundamental principle of conscience.
Second, we let medical professionals pick all sorts of things – what days they’re going to work (based on seniority), etc. Physicians in private practice are free to pick patients based on their conditions, their level of insurance, and more.
What fundamental principle of The Republic / western civilization / your personal ethics are so important that you’re so eager to cast 50% of the population out of the medical field?
Would it be legitimate for me to say that “from time to time software engineers have to work on DoD projects – projects that will kill people. It’s unfair for some engineers to not work on those projects – if they don’t want to, then they shouldn’t be software engineers” ?
January 14th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
If you are a doctor in Larry Niven’s Known Space series (in which transplant organs are obtained from executed criminals), and you disapprove of capital punishment for exceeding the speed limit, are you required to refer your patients to less scrupulous doctors?
For that matter in today’s society, is a doctor who disapproves of capital punishment required to refer patients who need transplants to Chinese surgeons considering that some of the organ supply might come from people executed for the purpose of transplant organs?