Religious Freedom vs Patients Rights

Recently, there have been complaints of medical professionals practicing based upon their religious or moral views. According to an article in the Washington Post, entitled “A Medical Crisis of Conscience“:

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.

The question is: are these medical professionals wrong? Should we force doctors to ignore their moral views or force patients to accept a doctor’s “freedom of conscience?”

In terms of new, controversial medicines or practices, I believe doctors should have a choice as to whether they prescribe these medicines or not. If a doctor vehemently opposes the morning after pill, for example, they should be more than welcome to post on their office: I do not prescribe morning after pills. But they should also be willing to divulge this information on their resume when applying for a job. As for being hired or not, this is where the situation gets fuzzy because a hospital could get sued for discrimination if they refuse to hire someone because they’re not prescribing a lot of medicines, right?

However, in all medicines and practices, doctors MUST be universal in who they prescribe medicines to. If someone is gay, a doctor cannot refuse to give them medication/surgery/etc for that reason. This is the same idea as if a person is refused care because they are a certain race or gender. It’s discrimination.

As for older, established medicines and practices, doctors know what they’re getting themselves into when they go through medical school and train to become a doctor. They know that, as a doctor, they’re going to have people request birth control. No matter what they personally feel about this, if a patient asks for it, they should give it to them. If they opposed giving out birth control so much, then perhaps they shouldn’t have gone to medical school or applied to work somewhere where your job would entail giving out birth control at some point. It’s the same idea as if you oppose eating meat why you wouldn’t become a butcher. Or if you hate vegetables you wouldn’t study botany.

But all in all, this is a really tough issue, and I’d love to hear your views.