Arkansas Passes Law Allowing Doctors To Refuse Service Due To Moral/Religious Objections

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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As a licensed healthcare professional I find it extremely important that my patients know that I am both legally and ethically committed to giving them the best possible care available regardless of who they are and that neither I nor my colleagues of all professions will refuse them treatment or care based on arbitrary, non-medical reasons. For the sake of the people of Arkansas, I'm hoping that their physicians will raise hell about this law that clashes with medical ethics.
Medical ethics and scientifically derived evidence-based practice are evil, collectivist impositions on individual freedom. So says Arkansas.
 

tstorm823

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A doctor who refuses to prescribe birth control to an adult woman will need to justify it medically;
...withholding medical care.
Very easily. It's their job. If they had a moral objection to doing their job, they shouldn't have applied. They shouldn't get to apply, take the job, and then pick-and-choose which bits of their job they actually want to do.
I don't understand the perspective of any of you. Is a doctor's job to give anyone whatever they ask for, so long as it doesn't kill them? Isn't the idea of patients going in and demanding a specific treatment entirely backwards? Like, you go to a doctor firstly to be advised on your health, if I went to a doctor to tell them what treatment to give me, I would expect to possibly be disregarded, cause I'm not a doctor.
If you thought that was funny, you misjudged it very badly.
As always, I say only the truth.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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As always, I say only the truth.
You say a lot of bullshit that you pompously dress up as profundity.

Medicine is a scientifically derived discipline, and medical ethics are abundantly clear about practitioners' duty to their patients. One of the cornerstones of medicine is that the need of the patient comes ahead of the wishes of the physician. The physician has grounds to refuse treatment he or she believes not in the best interest of the patient, but what is good and bad treatment is determined by rational consideration of scientific evidence, not 2000-year-old wafflings claimed to be the will of an unproven deity.

At the point a physician refuses treatment because it offends their personal morality, they have failed medical ethics. Patients are supposed to have autonomy, and it is not the job of doctors to erase that without a clear, rational justification.
 

tstorm823

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At the point a physician refuses treatment because it offends their personal morality, they have failed medical ethics.
Counterpoint: birth control isn't medical treatment. Voluntary termination of a pregnancy isn't medical treatment. Cosmetic surgery at the whims of vain rich people isn't medical treatment. Lots of things doctors do aren't medical treatment, and no medical ethics will obligate them to perform things that aren't medical treatment.

Edit: To dig into it further, a medical treatment has a medical purpose. A medical treatment exists to treat people's physical ailments. Lets take the nurse that wouldn't touch abortions. You can have emergency medical intervention and a voluntary pregnancy termination that are conceptually the same, but the purpose is different. If the nurse wouldn't touch the former, that's dereliction of duty. If she only cared about the latter, more power to her. To be less controversial, a doctor amputating a leg because of a life threatening infection is good medical treatment, where a doctor amputating a leg because a healthy patient asked to have a prosthetic leg is not giving medical treatment.
 
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Gergar12

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Against the 1st amendment. This will be challenged in court.
 

Gordon_4

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To be less controversial, a doctor amputating a leg because of a life threatening infection is good medical treatment, where a doctor amputating a leg because a healthy patient asked to have a prosthetic leg is not giving medical treatment.
Is there something different about the way doctors work in the United States compared to Australia? No sane doctor in this country I have ever met would need to use individual moral or religious grounds to refuse that kind of bullshit request because an out already exists, it is the statement "Your leg works fine, get out of my office you fucking Cyberpunk larper".
 

Adam Jensen

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birth control isn't medical treatment. Voluntary termination of a pregnancy isn't medical treatment. Cosmetic surgery at the whims of vain rich people isn't medical treatment.
Oh, I get it. You're completely clueless.
 

Trunkage

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Is there something different about the way doctors work in the United States compared to Australia? No sane doctor in this country I have ever met would need to use individual moral or religious grounds to refuse that kind of bullshit request because an out already exists, it is the statement "Your leg works fine, get out of my office you fucking Cyberpunk larper".
Yeah, it does work differently in the US. Miracle Mineral Solution is a medicine while RU86 is the destruction of society
 

Silvanus

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I don't understand the perspective of any of you. Is a doctor's job to give anyone whatever they ask for, so long as it doesn't kill them? Isn't the idea of patients going in and demanding a specific treatment entirely backwards? Like, you go to a doctor firstly to be advised on your health, if I went to a doctor to tell them what treatment to give me, I would expect to possibly be disregarded, cause I'm not a doctor.
It's not to give them "whatever they ask for". It's also not to give them "whatever the doctor feels like". A doctor's job is to provide the medical care that is most efficacious to address the reported issue, according to the best available research and a measure of their own practical expertise.

If they're deciding they just don't want to give certain treatments, based not on any practical or effectiveness consideration but just on whether they like that particular treatment or not, then they're not doing their job.
 

Revnak

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Neo-Platonism, not even once.

Like, genuinely, imagine if the Catholic Church felt the need to defend their ideas with evidence rather than fanciful interpretations of idealist philosophy from over two thousand years ago? It’s not even a good reading of Plato for fuck’s sake. It’s not like anyone ever said in any biblical text “this is what you can/cannot put around your dick when you fuck,” it’s literally on the basis that birth control, many forms of which predate recorded history, is inherently unnatural. It’s fucking hilarious.

Edit: Slavery? So long as you Christianize them, cool. Birth control that isn’t pulling out? Damnable heresy, disgusting.
 
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tstorm823

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You are literally arguing against actual, practiced reality with mere semantics.
semantics: the study of the meanings of words and phrases
medical: relating to the science of medicine, or to the treatment of illness and injuries.
fertility: not an illness or injury

Yes, yes I am disputing your "practiced reality" with the actual meanings of words. Medical ethics are about treating people with diseases and disorders, and you're extending it to lifestyle decisions, and you don't like me bringing up what words mean.
 

Seanchaidh

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semantics: the study of the meanings of words and phrases
medical: relating to the science of medicine, or to the treatment of illness and injuries.
fertility: not an illness or injury

Yes, yes I am disputing your "practiced reality" with the actual meanings of words. Medical ethics are about treating people with diseases and disorders, and you're extending it to lifestyle decisions, and you don't like me bringing up what words mean.
Oh, words, is it?

Medical condition

A medical condition is a broad term that includes all diseases, lesions, disorders, or nonpathologic condition that normally receives medical treatment, such as pregnancy or childbirth. While the term medical condition generally includes mental illnesses, in some contexts the term is used specifically to denote any illness, injury, or disease except for mental illnesses. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the widely used psychiatric manual that defines all mental disorders, uses the term general medical condition to refer to all diseases, illnesses, and injuries except for mental disorders.[14] This usage is also commonly seen in the psychiatric literature. Some health insurance policies also define a medical condition as any illness, injury, or disease except for psychiatric illnesses.[15] As it is more value-neutral than terms like disease, the term medical condition is sometimes preferred by people with health issues that they do not consider deleterious. On the other hand, by emphasizing the medical nature of the condition, this term is sometimes rejected, such as by proponents of the autism rights movement. The term medical condition is also a synonym for medical state, in which case it describes an individual patient's current state from a medical standpoint. This usage appears in statements that describe a patient as being in critical condition, for example.
 
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Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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Yes, yes I am disputing your "practiced reality" with the actual meanings of words. Medical ethics are about treating people with diseases and disorders, and you're extending it to lifestyle decisions, and you don't like me bringing up what words mean.
Right. But you also need an appropriate defintion. If you think a one-sentence summary simplification in a household dictionary is adequate to explain something that large and complex, god help you. Seanchaidh has already supplied evidence.

The things you want to describe are clearly parts of the discipline of medicine. Pregnancy is overseen by the medical profession (and has vast health implications). Hair transplants, liposuction and facelifts are conducted by the medical profession. They are medical treatments or procedures. There should not be a complication here.
 

tstorm823

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Right. But you also need an appropriate defintion. If you think a one-sentence summary simplification in a household dictionary is adequate to explain something that large and complex, god help you. Seanchaidh has already supplied evidence.

The things you want to describe are clearly parts of the discipline of medicine. Pregnancy is overseen by the medical profession (and has vast health implications). Hair transplants, liposuction and facelifts are conducted by the medical profession. They are medical treatments or procedures. There should not be a complication here.
I'm not seeing where Seanchaidh's supplied evidence disputes me. As a matter of fact, it raises the points of other groups insisting on maintaining the tradition definition of medical because they don't want to be lumped in with diseases. I know you're going to refuse, but you really should just admit that not every action taken during the course of a doctor's work is medical treatment. That's not what the word means. Medical treatment isn't "treatment performed by doctors". It's a specific thing.

And pregnancy is overseen by the medical profession because it is a situation that can often lead to disorders in need of treatment. Pregnancies are monitored for health problems, which are treated if they occur.
 

Silvanus

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semantics: the study of the meanings of words and phrases
medical: relating to the science of medicine, or to the treatment of illness and injuries.
fertility: not an illness or injury

Yes, yes I am disputing your "practiced reality" with the actual meanings of words. Medical ethics are about treating people with diseases and disorders, and you're extending it to lifestyle decisions, and you don't like me bringing up what words mean.
Ah. So if doctors/ nurses were to refuse to deliver a child (maybe they find childbirth icky), that'd be a-ok with you, correct? Getting knocked up was a "lifestyle decision", and being pregnant is not an "illness or injury".
 
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tstorm823

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Ah. So if doctors/ nurses were to refuse to deliver a child (maybe they find childbirth icky), that'd be a-ok with you, correct? Getting knocked up was a "lifestyle decision", and being pregnant is not an "illness or injury".
I mean, most doctors aren't OB/GYN. I don't see an issue with a doctor that doesn't do childbirth, and lots of childbirth is done without doctors.
 

McElroy

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The court's verdict can be summed up as: Don't pick a job which clashes with your religious beliefs.
Pretty much the same thing happened in Finland when an initiative reached the parliament in 2015. Our similar associations also noted that unwillingness to participate in abortions is rare among gynecologists and midwives, and thus it's not a problem to assign those duties to someone else. The very few problematic cases have had to do with mental trauma for participating in a late-term abortion, but that's like... how many possible traumatic things should a healthcare worker be permitted to avoid? You're bound to run into some heavy stuff.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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I know you're going to refuse, but you really should just admit that not every action taken during the course of a doctor's work is medical treatment.
No, sure. They also do stuff like fill out death certificates, go on continuing professional development courses and hold departmental meetings. I will happily agree that these are not medical treatments.

* * *

A "medical condition" is not where something is "wrong" per se, it is a condition which causes or has the potential to cause death, ill-health, or suffering. Pregnancy, for instance and as should be incredibly obvious, has extremely high likelihood of causing death, ill-health and suffering compared to not being pregnant, despite not being a pathology.

Yes, many medical procedures are not carried out by medical doctors. However, "medical professional" conventionally includes nurses, dentists, etc. It would be obviously absurd for something like venepuncture to be a medical procedure when done by a medical doctor but not when done by a nurse.

There are interesting arguments to be had about medicalisation of certain conditions. You are wildly and inappropriately overplaying them.