Personal Religious Beliefs-Sexual Orientation And Customers
The California Supreme Court has held…?
The facts were simple enough. A lesbian couple wanted to have a baby and decided one of the two would be impregnated by artificial insemination. It did not work because the recipient was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome and was referred to the North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group for fertility treatment. When the doctor who met with the couple learned that they were lesbians she informed them that she would not be able to comply with the necessay procedures because her religious beliefs would not permit her to help someone have a baby who was not married.
The couple sued based upon sexual orientation discrimination. The doctor argued that she was protected because of her right to free exercise of her religion.
WHO WINS???? LET ME HEAR FROM YOU! THE ANSWER WILL BE POSTED LATER IN THE WEEK.
4 Comments
The potential patient should win.
If you view health care as a commodity (I don’t), then when you offer your services for sale to the public, you leave your religious views at the door.
If, as I do, you view health care as a human right, you don’t have the right to withhold what you would offer to one person from another person on the basis of your religious scruples.
In either case, it makes no difference whether the medical procedure is elective or to preserve life from imminent danger.
The California Supreme Court has ruled that doctors cannot use their religion as a legal excuse for violating the civil rights of their patients. In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court justices ruled that, for the Lesbian Woman with polycystic ovarian syndrone, she was entitled to be treated like other patients with her same health problem, and that constitutional protections for religious liberty do not excuse unlawful discrimination.
The doctor should not have argued “because of her religon”. She took the Hippocratic Oath, if she was going to argue she should have used “To avoid violating the morals of my community.”
President Clinton executed an order protecting health care personnel from being involved in procedures that would offend their sense of religion.
On appeal, this should be a great case, but if precedent has anything to do with it this case will go the way of the pro life pharmacists. They were found to be exempt from dispensing of chemical birth control which is abortifacient.
We are not so smart as God is dumb.
RevRomansky
http://revromansky.wordpress.com