Tonight I read an article that shook me to my very core. The headline reads: "Judge rules doctors can refuse trans patients and women who have had abortions." After reading the first few paragraphs I learned that supposed Judge Reed O'Connor claimed that doctors who are being "forced" to heal and serve patients, who are transgendered or have received an abortion, violates the doctor's rights to religious freedom.
So apparently some doctor's desire the right to legally refuse to treat a human being if said human being is a transgendered person or woman who has had an abortion. A doctor wants to legally refuse to heal these beings because it goes against their religious beliefs.
Am I the only one who finds this to be absolutely ridiculous?
No, I do not identify as someone who is particularly religious, but refusing to do your job- refusing to help save another person's life just because you disagree with their personal/medical life choices, is straight wrong to me. What happened to the Hippocratic Oath? You know, that oath that doctors take when they become registered physicians to help and serve humanity with specific ethical standards? It's complete and utter crap to me that some doctors are claiming that it violates their religious rights when they are unable to refuse to treat particular groups of people. If you don't want to save lives, or heal, or help humanity in terms of medicine, then don't be a doctor. If you do have the urge and ability to save people, heal and protect them, without any bias or prejudice, then please carry on.
I once saw an episode of Grey's Anatomy (an extremely popular soap opera TV show that surrounds a surgerical wing in a hospital in Seattle, Washington), and in this particular episode a black female surgeon performed a life-saving operation on a white-supremacist man with a swastika tattooed on his abdomen. Part of the surgeon's predicament was wanting to abandon the man because of his obvious racial hatred and discrimination of her staff, but at the end of the day she performed the surgery because she knew it was the right thing to do. She knew that even though she obviously disagreed with much of what the man stood for, it was not in her job description to deny him medical treatment. It was not her job to judge the man and refuse to help him. It was her job to heal him. Now I know this sounds corny, and it is a TV show after all, but doesn't the moral of this episode resonate in real life with us today?
Shouldn't doctor's want to help and treat all patients, regardless of their personal or religious beliefs? Furthermore, shouldn't all teachers treat their students equally regardless of their personal or religious beliefs? All policemen? All firemen? Everyone serving the public?
I understand the importance of religion in human life. But I don't understand how a doctor may want to legally refuse to treat a human being because of their personal religious beliefs. I have no aspiration to be a doctor, or to gain employment in any medical field in general, but I just cannot fathom how someone could go through 10+ years of higher education, training, pass numerous exhausting tests, and then refuse to treat particular people because of personal beliefs? I guess I always assumed that professionals in the medical field left their personal biases at the door, to treat people and do their job, but I guess I was wrong.
I suppose I'm just overwhelmingly disappointed, but I don't mean to offend anyone reading this. I'm just utterly shocked after reading this very heart-breaking article. I feel that women and transgendered people are facing punishment for making individual, personal choices, and it is wrong for doctors to turn them away in their time of need.
Below is the article which I reference repeatedly:
