http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19190916/
I had no idea this was such a wide-spread problem. I guess I just thought Doctors would know better (religious observance corresponds inversely with intelligence -- aren't doctors smart?). Ethically, a Doctor should be required to present legal/approved medical procedures and medications to patients as options for their symptoms and complaints, particularly when specifically asked about those options. Even if the doctor feels that he cannot provide that procedure/medication, the option should be presented and explained, and the physician should be forced to immediately refer the patient to a non-objecting doctor if desired by the patient.
Also, the doctor should receive an immediate MRI to check for brain irregularities, and undergo a psychiatric evaluation to see if he/she is delusional, believes magic sky faeries are talking to him/her, or engages in the ritualistic eating and drinking of materials he/she believes to represent human flesh and/or blood.
Quote:
| Lori Boyer couldn't stop trembling as she sat on the examining table, hugging her hospital gown around her. Her mind was reeling. She'd been raped hours earlier. Bruised and in pain, she grimaced through the pelvic exam. Now, as Boyer watched Martin Gish, M.D., jot some final notes into her chart, she thought of something the rape counselor had mentioned earlier. "I'll need the morning-after pill," she told him. Dr. Gish looked up. He was a trim, middle-aged man with graying hair and, Boyer thought, an aloof manner. "No," Boyer says he replied abruptly. "I can't do that." He turned back to his writing. Even under less dire circumstances than Boyer's, it's not always easy talking to your doctor about sex. Whether you're asking about birth control, STDs or infertility, these discussions can be tinged with self-consciousness, even embarrassment. Now imagine those same conversations, but supercharged by the anxiety that your doctor might respond with moral condemnation — and actually refuse your requests. That's exactly what's happening in medical offices and hospitals around the country: Catholic and conservative Christian health care providers are denying women a range of standard, legal medical care. Planned Parenthood M.D.s report patients coming to them because other gynecologists would not dole out birth control prescriptions or abortion referrals. Infertility clinics have turned away lesbians and unmarried women; anesthesiologists and obstetricians are refusing to do sterilizations; Catholic hospitals have delayed ending doomed pregnancies because abortions are only allowed to save the life of the mother. In a survey published this year in The New England Journal of Medicine, 63 percent of doctors said it is acceptable to tell patients they have moral objections to treatments, and 18 percent felt no obligation to refer patients elsewhere. And in a recent SELF.com poll, nearly 1 in 20 respondents said their doctors had refused to treat them for moral, ethical or religious reasons. "It's obscene," says Jamie D. Brooks, a former staff attorney for the National Health Law Program who continues to work on projects with the Los Angeles advocacy group. "Doctors swear an oath to serve their patients. But instead, they are allowing their religious beliefs to compromise patient care. And too often, the victims of this practice are women." Physicians anywhere can deny you care. But some states back up M.D.s with specific laws allowing them to do so, says Elizabeth Nash, public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute research group. Whose side is your state on? Compared with the highly publicized issue of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception, physician refusals are a little-discussed topic. Patients denied treatment rarely complain — the situation tends to feel so humiliatingly personal. And when patients do make noise, the case is usually resolved quietly. " In many cases, women don't even know a doctor is withholding treatment. Boyer and Harnish, for example, wouldn't have realized they'd been denied care if they'd been among the estimated one in three women who don't know about EC. In the New England Journal of Medicine survey, 8 percent of physicians said they felt no obligation to present all options to their patients. "When you see a doctor, you presume you're getting all the information you need to make a decision," notes Jill Morrison, senior counsel for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C. "Especially in a crisis situation, like a rape, you often don't think to question your care. But unfortunately, now we can't even trust doctors to tell us what we need to know." |
Also, the doctor should receive an immediate MRI to check for brain irregularities, and undergo a psychiatric evaluation to see if he/she is delusional, believes magic sky faeries are talking to him/her, or engages in the ritualistic eating and drinking of materials he/she believes to represent human flesh and/or blood.
