Maggie Gallagher annoys me. She annoys me a great big heap. Of course, that means I read her column with a religious devotion. Most weeks, I start some kind of post rebutting her latest insanity. Usually I get so irritated that I can’t finish it.
This week, however, I can’t let it pass.
Her column is here. Go ahead and read it, but I will summarize. A lesbian in California wished to be artificially inseminated. Her doctors, being devout Christian types would not allow the procedure on moral grounds. I.E. ‘We devout Christian types don’t like gay people, and they shouldn’t have children’.
The woman sued, alleging discrimination.
The California state supreme court ruled that the doctors cannot deny the procedure because of their moral objections.
Ms. Gallagher’s column is making the point that this ruling is an infringement on the religious liberties of the doctors. Variations of this issue have been bouncing around for a while. Pharmacists refusing to sell birth control..ect.
This is not an issue of religious freedom. This is an issue of professional responsibility. Allow me to make a few analogies:
A criminal defense lawyer has a client who is accused of murder. This lawyer opposes murder on moral grounds. (Wasn’t there something like…thou shall not kill?…anyway). During the course of the trial, the lawyer doesn’t give his client a proper defense. Let’s say, in the extreme, the lawyer doesn’t cross-examine a single prosecution witness or call a single defense witness.
After all, this lawyer has a religious objection to murder. Hell, most people, religious or otherwise, have an objection to murder.
Isn’t this lawyer just following his beliefs? Sure. But the state bar association has another word for this type of activity; disbarment. If you don’t act in your client’s best interest, you can lose your job. Religious concerns do not factor in. At all. If you don’t wish to be in those kinds of situations, do not go to law school, or at the very least, practice another kind of law.
A second example; a man joins the Marine Corps and is sent to Iraq. Let’s say while he’s there he undergoes a religious transformation and becomes a Muslim. Then, suppose he is sent to the front lines and ordered to take out an enemy position.
He decides that killing fellow Muslims is wrong. He informs his superiors that he’s not going to follow orders. Again, this man is following his religious beliefs.
And the Marine Corps would call it treason.
No one forced these doctors to go to med school, and no one forced them to work at The North Coast Women’s Medical Group for crying out loud.
My message to these doctors:
Do your job. This is exactly what you signed up for. Don’t like it? Go do something else.
