Yeah this whole, “Pharmacists should be required to dispense pills they are morally opposed to, because of a minority of people who choose to live in the sticks and not wear a f***ing condom.”, is a poor argument to me. If a Pharmacist doesn’t want to dispense birth control they shouldn’t have to.
Would it be wronger ( 
) if the doctor provided the same procedure to some patients but not others? 'Cause then I think you’d have a much easier route to prevent this: discrimination based on protected class. Of course, that opens a whole 'nother can of worms as we learn more about how gender, ethnicity and even hair color influence the absorption of drugs and best protocols, but no one said this would be easy!
I don’t inherintly have a problem with doctors refusing to perform abortions IF there is another safe, legal, affordable and available provider in the area who can provide the service in a timely fashion. Or if the feds want to pay for private shuttles for women to get to the nearest provider. Or some other way of ensuring that abortions are practical, as well as simply legal. But that’s a whole lotta ifs, and my gut says the best way to handle it is to simply ensure that if you’re trained to do them and you hang out your shingle in a specialty that includes every other area of female reproductive health, you should be prepared to do abortions. Don’t want to? Then become a pediatrician instead.
WhyNot An abortion is not a right.
This logic holds if you have more than one local OB and at least one of them is willing to perform the procedure, or if you have a car, time off from work available and a babysitter to stay with your kids for two nights while you travel to another state to get one. South Dakota was down to one clinic providing abortions once a month for several years, and now they have none at all.
We don’t all live in cities.
So a OB doc goes to school with the sole purpose of using their skills to help couples create and deliver new life. That same doc, regardless if any moral issues should also be forced to take life as well? Should they be forced to equip their office with the “aborter 2000” to insure the quickest procedure? If the feds in your world are giving free rides to get abortions shouldn’t they also be paying for that machine to be in the OB’s office since they are being forced to use it? :rolleyes:
Apparently it is not. A lesbian couple who are friends of mine were unable to go to their regular OB/GYN for this very reason. (Do not ask me for a cite and I am not going to mention the practices name.) However, they were referred to another clinic.
As far as forcing a physician to perform procedures they are morally against just because they happen to be legal? I can not see how this wouldn’t be an infringement of the medical providers rights. There are currently G.Y.N.s that no longer deliver babies due to med malpractice rates. Should they be forced to deliver children as well?
Safe, rare and available, that’s all I care about. The rest I leave to you.
To quote my esteemed fellow poster:
So once again, in your world, or the South Dakota part of it, every OB, or GP who has anything to do with women’s reproductive health, from Rapid City to Mitchell would have to equip their offices and acquire the knowledge and training to perform abortions as well?
That quote doesn’t work for you: I was responding specifically to your point that another provider would provide the service, as if this is something the free market will take care of and there will always be someone around to do it if one doctor refuses.
Yep - OBs, anyway. I think GPs have enough on their plate, and abortions aren’t as tightly integrated with their practice. I’d like to see abortion part of the scope of practice for obstetrics in licensure acts. I don’t know whether or not it currently is in any state, but in The World According to Me, it should be.
How would you feel about an ER doc who was morally opposed to intubation? You’d tell him to get another job. Abortions are part and parcel of gynecology and obstetrics, along with PAP smears, LEEPs and diaphragm fittings. They’re part of “family planning”, along with birth control and infertility treatments.
Would they not be taught about fetal abnormalities? Birthing complications that might require them to save the life of the mother at the expense of the child (or, perhaps, not)?
I am sure that they are. Nonetheless, they are not forced to act upon those situations. Instead they have the option of referring to a specialist with the proper training, equipment and experience to handle the tough ones. Specialists specialize. This makes the procedures much safer for all involved.
Once you began stating that the feds force docs to perform abortions and provide shuttle service for those who cannot drive, you take it to the next level. There is no right to an abortion in the country anymore than there is a right to free cheese.
So who is going to pay for the equipment to outfit every OB office in your world?
Are you seriously comparing a life saving measure with an abortion? Seriously?
To which I do not disagree. Where you and I have a disagreement is when the feds step in to force a doctor to equip their office, train them self and their staff, and undertake additional malpractice coverage to perform a procedure simply because you say so.
To me, the legislation only passes the sniff test if you could apply the same protections to other professions with religious or moral convictions.
Would a Christian Scientist surgeon be fired for not performing surgery?
Would a Muslim hot dog vendor be fired for not selling hot dogs, or a Muslim truck driver fired for not delivering to the liquor store?
Could an observant Jewish waiter be fired for refusing to serve a diner a burger with cheese?
Seems to me that in most of the above cases, the person could and would be fired. The only reason the legislation extends to protect doctors is because abortion is somebody’s pet issue (and because it’s an election year and they’re trying to drum up support for the base; watch for a flag-burning bill next).
Let’s step back a sec: I only suggested that in response to the suggestion that the feds “strengthen protection” for those who don’t want to give abortions. I’m not calling for it under the current system. I just think if we install extra measures to protect doctors, we should also install extra measures to make sure women and their families aren’t hurt or unduly burdened by those extra measures. Make sense?
I now see where you are coming from. I just don’t see the equality between the two. Under the current system a woman can choose to have an abortion as she sees fit. At the surface this legislation simply provides protections to a doctor who chooses not to perform an abortion, for whatever reason. I fail to see how that doc’s personal preference somehow entitles the woman to special treatment or protection.
She is still able to get an abortion, just not from the doctor in question. Whether that places an undue burden on her or her family is really not my concern. I know that sounds cold.
Is this about protecting doctors or protecting the support staff who might work at a clinic and be assigned to assist in an abortion? It would seem completely unnecessary to protect the doctors, since they can simply choose not to practice that procedure.
"The basic idea is that people should not be forced to say or to do things they believe are morally wrong.”
The word “forced” is disingenuous misdirection at best. It leads to irrelevant conversations and hypotheticals about parties demanding services from other parties, and suggests that doctors are being unduly compelled under the threat of government sanctions.
That isn’t to say there is no issue—whether an employer who accepts Federal funds can set a particular restriction on employment—but it’s absurd to fall for such semantical shenanigans.
Come on … won’t someone think of the children?!
I think that the majority of posters in this thread have not understood the scope of the new rule.
Of course, a private practice OB/GYN or any other medical provider does not have to perform abortion if they don’t want to. There’s absolutely no requirement that they equip or train themselves to do so, and this legislation doesn’t really do anything about how 90% of the abortions that are performed in this country happen.
Essentially, it would create another “protected class” for healthcare employees. For instance, you can’t discriminate upon race or disability so long as it doesn’t preclude someone from performing their job duties. Under this rule, you won’t be able to fire a provider that doesn’t want to, in my view, perform a full scope of medical practice. Presumably the administration will soon come along with new rules that will permit emergency medicine doctors that are also Jehovah’s Witnesses to decline to participate in blood transfusions without fear of losing their jobs.
I’m strongly opposed to this rule because I’m generally a free-market sort of guy. If a hospital feels a compelling reason to fire or not hire someone for a reason related to the performance of their job, they should be able to do it.
I’m strongly opposed to this rule because people that want elective abortions don’t show up at the ER at 3:00 AM on a Monday morning asking for one. They go to outpatient OB/GYN practices that perform them or even clinics that specialize in and are organized around providing abortion services. Docs that don’t want to perform abortions don’t work for these clinics.
The situations that this rule are most likely to affect are emergency services or patients that choose abortions due to medical complications of a pregnancy. What if your wife, girlfriend, daughter or sister presented to the ER with an ectopic pregnancy requiring emergency medical care? How happy would you be if the attending emergency physician declined to provide the best treatment due to a personal objection to abortion?
To make a more specific hypothetical, what if the condition was an abdominal ectopic pregnancy? An abdominal ectopic pregnancy occurs when an egg implants on the lining of the abdominal cavity instead of within the uterus. It is a potentially viable but extraordinarily risky pregnancy. A hospital doesn’t have the right to fire providers that decline to provide appropriate surgical intervention?
threemae Since you put it that way, I agree.
:rolleyes: There is a world of difference between forcing someone to commit something that they think is murder, and making Jewish waiter serve a burger with cheese. :rolleyes:
Also, a Muslim hot dog vendor who won’t sell hot dogs, is not a hot dog vendor. A doctor who does not perform abortions is still a doctor, because abortions are a teeny, tiny part of a doctors job. Emotionally they can be a hugely destructive part, but time-wise, unless you specialise in them they are tiny.