a "right of conscience" for health workers -- very "American' it is argued

[rodeodance]

......The issue has become acute for some religious workers, especially devout Christians, for whom the concept of "conscience" plays a particularly prominent role. One development after another has challenged their values: treatments using fetal tissue; physician-assisted suicide; the RU-486 abortion pill; the morning-after pill; fertility clinics discarding thousands of excess embryos; and now a looming wave of therapies derived from embryonic stem cells.........

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/15/AR2006071500846_pf.html

A Medical Crisis of Conscience
Faith Drives Some To Refuse Patients Medication or Care

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 16, 2006; A01

In Chicago, an ambulance driver refused to transport a patient for an abortion. In California, fertility specialists rebuffed a gay woman seeking artificial insemination. In Texas, a pharmacist turned away a rape victim seeking the morning-after pill.

Around the United States, health workers and patients are clashing when providers balk at giving care that they feel violates their beliefs, sparking an intense, complex and often bitter debate over religious freedom vs. patients' rights.

Legal and political battles have followed. Patients are suing and filing complaints after being spurned. Workers are charging religious discrimination after being disciplined or fired. Congress and more than a dozen states are considering laws to compel workers to provide care -- or, conversely, to shield them from punishment.

Proponents of a "right of conscience" for health workers argue that there is nothing more American than protecting citizens from being forced to violate their moral and religious values. Patient advocates and others point to a deep tradition in medicine of healers having an ethical and professional responsibility to put patients first.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. So if you don't want to provide some types of medical procedures

on account of your "conscience," maybe you should find another line of work.

[nosillies]

3. agreed, see previous discussion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x9689

[rodeodance]

4. yes. In the later part of the article--someone says this.

[NanceGreggs]

5. That WOULD seem to be the logical approach ...

... wouldn't it?

[rodeodance]

2. says it is not a new argument---(more pronounced now I would say).

.......The debate over the right of conscience in health care is far from new. After the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, many states passed laws protecting doctors and nurses who did not want to perform abortions. Oregon's 1994 legalization of physician-assisted suicide lets doctors and nurses decline to participate.

The clash resurfaced with antiabortion pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for the morning-after pill. But recent interviews with dozens of health-care workers, patients, advocates, ethicists, legal experts and religious and medical authorities make it clear that the issue is far broader. Many health-care workers are asserting a right of conscience in many settings.

"This issue is the San Andreas Fault of our culture," said Gene Rudd of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations. "How we decide this is going to have a long-lasting impact on our society."

Some anesthesiologists refuse to assist in sterilization procedures. Respiratory therapists sometimes object to removing ventilators from terminally ill patients. Gynecologists around the country may decline to prescribe birth control pills. Some doctors reject requests for Viagra from unmarried men.........

[Mandate My Ass]

6. This enrages me

Proponents of a "right of conscience" for health workers argue that there is nothing more American than protecting citizens from being forced to violate their moral and religious values.

Forced? Don't bring your church to work with you. Provide the services that are medically valid and appropriate or find another line of work! They're the ones forcing their religion on others in a health care setting and claiming victim status which is totally and utterly ridiculous.

[HockeyMom]

7. Their religious rights END where mine,

or lack of them, begin. Same as with any of our constitutional rights.

[pooja]

8. I think that all places that deny the morning after pill, which

FDA has said could be sold over the counter.. should be brought to shame... We should go in demand the pill, when they deny... in front of a store full of people.. shout loudly "I was Raped, I don't want to have a Rapists baby"... bet that would change a few things..

[saracat]

9. It wouldn't change anything. They both don't think you can be raped

and if you were, it was "God's will" and you have not right to question it. And it might make you sick to find out how many people think that way>

[pooja]

10. i think it would...when you put a face to a crisis.. things change.

They would all be thinking of their own daughters, nieces, grand-daughters.. it would change..

[saracat]

12. You give them too much credit. You are not human to them

and neither are their daughters.

[johnaries]

11. When I was hired at every job I've ever had,

on the application it asked me if I had any kind of condition that would keep me from performing the duties on that job.

Providing these services and treatments are part of their job. If their religion or conscience inhibits them from performing their duties, then they need to find another job. Period.

It's as simple as that.

Edit to add an example: If you got a job at a Convienence Store and then refused to sell beer or cigarettes, how long do you think you could keep that job?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. Say you're a waiter/waitress at a restaurant,

and your fat customer orders a huge, greasy meal. Your conscience won't let you help your fat customer contribute to his weight problem so you bring him a salad and some steamed broccoli instead.

Or you're a vegetarian who works at the checkout counter in a grocery store, and you refuse to ring up a customer's purchase of pork chops.

Or you're a pilot with a plane load of people on a charter to Las Vegas. You think gambling is immoral, so you fly them to Salt Lake City instead.

You're a cable TV installer who blocks customers' lines so they can't get channels you don't approve of.

That's how dumb this is.