Saying doctors can refuse to treat individuals they don't like can open the door to ethnic cleansing

[ck4829]

Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1255, also called the Conscientious Objection Act, would absolve medical care providers of liability in cases where reproductive care was denied based on a practitioner's religious or moral beliefs.

Services a provider would be free to withhold, with immunity, include performing an abortion, artificial insemination, and prescribing birth control or emergency contraception (also known as the "morning-after pill").

"There shall be no cause of action against a health care provider for declining to participate in a health care service that violates his or her conscience," the bill reads. "A health care institution that declines to provide or participate in a health care service that violates its conscience," it adds, "shall not be civilly, criminally or administratively liable."

"I intend with this bill," says Senator John Eichelberger (R-Altoona) to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, "to make it very clear that people in health care and in medical institutions would be held harmless if they for religious reasons decide not to provide procedures for abortion or contraception."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Pennsylvania_bill_0217.html

This bill is more than just about abortion or contraception. It could very well allow a doctor to deny treatment to groups of people that he doesn't like.

You have a 'Christian' Hospital and you don't think it's OK to give life saving medical care to gay individuals? "Go for it!" is what this bill is saying.

http://www.rawstory.com/images/other/sb1777.pdf

This brings me to the ethnic cleansing part of this. Ethnic cleansing can be more than rounding up the group and systematically executing them. No, it can be much more subtle than that. There can be administrative acts of ethnic cleansing as well. Things like not letting the target group work, harassing them, and denying them medical care.

Note to people in the medical field: You're here to heal people, not to be the back door to genocide.

Maybe it's time for a new Civil Rights Act, something that will stop attempts to deny people medical treatments.

[ixion]

1. if a doctor takes the Hippocratic oath, they are obligated to treat people

if they can't handle it, they should get out of the profession, IMO.

[Warpy]

3. The same is true of nurses.

We can't pick and choose which patients to care for. If someone is sick and suffering, everything else is secondary and those prejudices have to be checked at the hospital door. Oh, patients are allowed to fire nurses and nurses request not to have patients when there's a real personality clash, but that doesn't happen often.

The truth is we have to take all comers, whether we'd approve of them in our life outside work or not, and do our best to make them more comfortable and less afraid so they can get well.

Docs in this town who are HIV phobic and tried to refuse to treat gay patients have had their licenses yanked. It should be the same for any doc who refuses to care for a patient for any non medical reason.

[Donnachaidh]

2. And if they refuse to treat people -- they should be barred from praticing medicine for LIFE.

I wouldn't even allow them to clean stalls on a horse ranch. :grr:

[angrycarpenter]

4. There are good and bad doctors.

But I think that most of them would resist any organized attempt to cut off any large group of people. On an individual basis I think that it is fair. If you were a store owner and you did not want to sell cigs or beer or porno for moral reasons there is no one to say you have to.

[yardwork]

7. Totally different things. Cigs and beer and porno are not necessary for life.

Doctors are licensed to provide life-enhancing and life-saving care. If they aren't willing to provide that care, then they should go into the retail business and stop pretending to be doctors.

[angrycarpenter]

10. Some of these doctors look at it as saving life.

I am not looking for an argument, nor do I approve of withholding contraception. But telling a doctor that he has to end a life or else is not right.

I don't see any large scale movement to just let any group of people die on any moral grounds. The bill is about allowing a person to make moral judgments in their life and career without fear of being sued. Just let one allow a gay person to die because they are gay. They won't be a doctor for long.

[yardwork]

12. Nobody ever forces any doctor to perform an abortion. Nobody.

These laws are all about withholding contraception. Period.

[angrycarpenter]

14. The only thing I am arguing in favor of is freedom of choice.

The bill is a bunch of crap. Doctors who give some stupid sermon instead of a prescription are idiots.

Contraception is forbidden in most faiths. Legally requiring someone to commit what they see as a deadly sin on a regular basis is wrong.

I am certainly not arguing for the status quo. There are so many things screwed up with getting effective birth control I don't even know where to start. But trying to make religious nuts go against God will only add fuel to the fire.

[yardwork]

15. Do you have any evidence that "contraception is forbidden in most faiths?"

I think that that is extremely unlikely, but I'll read any data you have to support the statement.

[Donnachaidh]

9. then if you are the store owner you DON'T Stock the stuff!

If a doctor takes the oath they should be REQUIRED to treat people. period. A store owner who doesn't want to sell something just doesn't stock the item.

[knitter4democracy]

5. Doctors already have this right. They always have.

Any doctor can refuse to care for someone, just as anyone can refuse the care of any doctor.

If the doctor has already established the doctor-patient relationship with that patient, then there are standards for making sure nothing bad happens to that patient. Most policies state that the doctor has to give the patient 30 days to find a new doctor and not discontinue care during that time. I know that's the policy where Hubby practices.

In reality, this bill won't add any rights that the doctors don't already have.

[Ian David]

6. If this bill passed, and I was a doctor, I'd refuse to treat Republians. n/t

[SeattleGirl]

8. Here's an idea: Doctors with similar "ethical/moral" leanings can

band together and start their own clinics.

There can be the right-wing-fundy-sex-is-bad-if-you're-a-female clinic.

Another group can start the Protestant clinic.

Another could start the Catholic clinic.

And the doctors who plan to stick with their Hippocratic Oath and treat all who need treated can open their own clinic.

Wanna bet which clinic would get the most business?

[niyad]

13. I think there already is a fundy=based clinic, remember reading something about it.

anybody here remember that story?

[niyad]

11. then these people need to be in other professions. end of discussion.