LawBlog has an intriguing article about a decision handed down from the California Supreme Court yesterday ruling that doctors may not discriminate against gays and lesbians in medical treatment, even if the procedures being sought conflict with religious beliefs.
Despite yesterday’s assertion that gay marriage was right as potato salad with me, this bothers me a great deal. But before I rant:
“The 1st Amendment’s right to the free exercise of religion does not exempt defendant physicians here from conforming their conduct to the . . . antidiscrimination requirements,” Justice Joyce L. Kennard wrote for the court.
Holy merlot! This absolutely preposterous. A doctor’s own conscience is suddenly subjugated to the State merely because he is a doctor? This is terrifying.
Here’s what happened in the case: Guadalupe Benitez, a lesbian who lives with her partner and wants to become pregnant with donated sperm, filed a suit after Dr. Christine Brody said she wouldn’t perform an intrauterine insemination. In her lawsuit, Benitez alleged that Brody said her religious views prevented her from providing the procedure to a lesbian. Benitez also claimed that another physician at the clinic told her that the staff was uncomfortable helping her conceive a child.
While Benitez has every right to do whatever she wants with her body (thanks Roe v Wade!), she doesn’t have the right to make others complicit in her actions.
The doctors denied the allegations. Brody said she would not perform the procedure on any unmarried woman, heterosexual or homosexual.
Which is within her right as well.
The court said the doctors’ constitutional rights to freedom of religion did not trump the state anti-discrimination law because the state has a compelling interest in ensuring full and equal access to medical care.
Blink blink. Wha? The constitutional rights of the doctors are subordinate to the STATE’s interest in …. NO. Just no. This is nonsense. This is horrible. This isn’t even “medical care”. This is a voluntary procedure, like a breast augmentation. This isn’t a heart transplant. And the doctor’s aren’t indentured to the state; they’re private doctors!
However, the court also said the doctors could testify at a trial that their religious beliefs barred them from doing the procedure for reasons other than the patient’s sexual orientation.
How nice that the court is telling them what they can testify to.
Kenneth R. Pedroza, the lawyer who repped the doctors, said the ruling would probably cause many physicians to refuse to perform inseminations at all. Pedroza said Brody did not violate the law because it did not bar discrimination on the basis of marital status when Benitez sought insemination in 1999. The state law has since been amended.
The Supreme Court’s ruling sends the case back to the San Diego County Superior Court for trial.
I am sickened by this case. I don’t care what reasons the doctors had for not performing the procedure; they’re not beholden to the state to decide what their conscience will or won’t allow them to do. Furthermore, the plaintiffs can go elsewhere to get the procedure; surely in California (of all places) they can find a doctor amenable to performing the procedure.
I think this is less about discrimination and more about Benitez seeing dollar signs flash before her eyes.
1 Comment
August 20, 2008 at 9:46 am
I like when I agree with you!