Ethics, Religion, Medicine Overlap in Provider Care Clashes
By Ed Thomas, OneNewsNow.com A spokesman for the Christian Medical and Dental Association (CMDA) agrees with a published report that states the majority of disputes arising between patients and their medical doctors who refuse to give treatments or services are related to religious or ethical convictions. However, he feels that it is better that way.
A case reaching California’s Supreme Court this year will address the issue of fertility treatment denied to a lesbian. And according to a report in USA Today, it is just one example of the many conflicts that include refusals for abortion, artificial insemination, use of fetal tissues, and even Viagra prescriptions.
Dr. Gene Rudd, senior vice president of CMDA, says those refusals are just more publicized than ever, but represent what has always been a substantial sampling of medical professionals choosing ethics and morals over popular trends.
“If this right is taken away from pharmacists or physicians, do we really want to go to people for our health care who’ve been sort of ethically and morally neutered? Who’ve been told, ‘no, you can’t act on your convictions’, “asks Rudd. “Bioethicists tell us that it’s those moral convictions that may be that last barrier between us and abusive care, between us and lack of integrity in the health care system.”
USA Today reports 46 states allow abortion refusal, 17 sterilization refusals, and 13 contraception refusals for health care providers. Rudd says two other states, Illinois and Washington, have just recently denied right of conscientious refusal for pharmacists on dispensing their medications. Rudd says those legal restraints are a mistake for our country’s First Amendment standard and for patients’ trust in their providers.
(Source: oneNewsNow.com)
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