I don’t know if this fits with this site but no one has posted in a while so…A couple of days ago I read about the Regulation Proposed to Help Protect Health Care Providers from Discrimination. The gist is that a provider doesn’t have to give proper health care if it is against thier religion. The standard example is abortion. A doctor is able to refuse to give an abortion if is againt thier religion. Another example is a doctor not giving emergency contraception to a rape victim, or even be required to tell her that such a thing exists.
I think this sets a bad precedence. A public health care provider should be required to give the best and most accurate knowledge and service to a patient. It shouldn’t matter what their religious feelings are. As far as I know most abortions are done at specialized clinics, so if a doctor doesn’t want to give abortions they shouldn’t get a job at one of these clinics. It is their right to choose a job based on religion, but once they have a job they shouldn’t be protected for not doing that job. It is also their right to choose a non public job. I am sure there are private health care providers, all though I am not sure what the regulations are on them. The point is that a health care providers job is to take care of a patient, regulations should be put in place to protect patient rights against doctors superstitions. What if a patient has a curable illness, but the doctor recommends only prayer, instead of the standard tested treatment? I think this person should be fired, not protected.
I also think this is interesting because this Regulation wants to protect against discrimination, but I think it encourages it. I think that if it is the doctors right to not do certain procedures based on beliefes, it should be the right of a hospital to know about that up front and hire or not hire based in this information. As it stands Religion and beliefs are a personal issue and they is why they should not be discriminated against, but if people want to make them a publc issue even so much as to effect work, then it becomes a relevent issue that is effecting others. That is not ok.
