Tara Rule says her doctor in upstate New York was “determined to protect a hypothetical fetus" instead of helping her treat debilitating pain.

  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    401
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    If doctors (or pharmacists) want the choice to impose their own religion on their patients, then at minimum need need to disclose that before ever meeting a patient. Additionally it would disqualify them from accepting any patients that are subsidized with taxpayer money.

    This could act like the Surgeon General’s warning on a pack of cigarettes:

    WARNING: this physician acts with their own religion in mind before your well being. This could be a danger to your health.

    • harmonea@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      129
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I don’t understand why this is even allowed. If someone had a religious opposition to consuming or enabling the consumption (cooking, serving, etc) of certain foods – shellfish, pork, sweets during lent, meat in general, whatever – that person could not reasonably expect to get a job in a restaurant where that food is regularly served. Like, if a waiter showed up for work at a steakhouse one day and refused to touch any plate with meat on it on religious grounds, no one would be on that waiter’s side when there are vegan restaurants that waiter could have applied to instead.

      Doctors are held to a different standard because… the mental gymnastics say it’s totally fine when it’s a woman being denied service I guess?

      If these healthcare “professionals” only want to treat men like they deserve humane care, they should be in a field more suited to their preferences.

      Failing that, yes, I agree with your comment entirely.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Don’t get it either. I am sure it is quite possible to be a doctor and not be involved with abortion. I am an engineer and I have strong objections to working on military stuff, so I don’t work for military contractors. Other ones don’t so they do.

      • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I’m going to try again (and you know, maybe I’m just wrong but here’s what I’m seeing).

        There are doctors in the medical field already, with specific beliefs that may be sexist but are not generally speaking, sexist people. There is also a shortage of doctors.

        Do we really want to throw out an entire doctor (that takes years of training) because they don’t want to do a particular procedure?

        There is a secondary point of when is refusal to do a procedure sexism or religion vs genuine medical objection to the harms caused (in their medical opinion).

        There is an additional point where I fundamentally think legal compulsion is a terrible tool in a free society and should be used as an absolute last resort.

        When it comes down to something as sensitive as medicine, I’d rather my doctor be on board or I find a different doctor vs my doctor being compelled to do something they don’t believe in or outright having no doctor to go to because … there aren’t enough.

        There’s also the possibility (and it seems like in the video) that the Roe v Wade issue is also making this doctor far more skiddish even in New York State. We really haven’t heard his side and that really is an important perspective.

        Surely there’s somebody else this woman could see as well? There’s no way this guy is the only one that knows about these medications and maybe another doctor would like to use a different medication anyways. There are plenty of other cases of doctors saying “you’re fine” to people regardless of gender or sex and them needing to see a different doctor before getting the right treatment.

        I originally went after your analogy because it’s so beyond comparison. You might as well make an analogy between a rocket scientist and a scientologist. There are so many layers of nuance here. Driving politics into medical decisions is part of how we got here … is adding more complex “do I need a lawyer (to do what I believe is the best practice)” to a doctor’s practice really a good idea?

        That presumably kind of worked for racism but I still can’t imagine the truly racist doctors were giving their best service; like we didn’t just say “you must see black patients or leave medicine” and then the problems were fixed. There are plenty of black people alive today that still distrust the institution of medicine – including my neighbor who refused to get vaccinated because he doesn’t trust doctors – because of what’s been done in the past.

        • harmonea@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          22
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Analogies are tools to assist understanding, and having opposition debate the analogies themselves instead of the actual points they’re used to make is a sign of a weak rebuttal.

          So let’s ignore all the haggling over the analogy and bring it back to the broader point: People should not be in jobs which their personal beliefs prevent doing significant or important aspects of. And equality between genders is objectively an important aspect of health care. These “professionals” should not be in the health care field at all, save perhaps male-focused care fields like prostate or testicular health.

    • bassomitron@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      96
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      No, they should have their medical license revoked. Doctors have to swear an oath to not intentionally or knowingly harm a patient for a reason, because their well being is their top priority. If they can’t adhere to that oath because of arbitrary religious/philosophical/political/whatever beliefs, then they have no business being a medical professional.

      • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I agree. A doctor putting their own religious beliefs over established medical science and the well being of their patient is completely against the Hippocratic Oath.

        • medgremlin@lemmy.sdf.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          Unfortunately, the original Hippocratic oath that many doctors swear to includes a line about not performing abortions or prescribing abortifacients.

          It is my understanding that, at the time that version of the oath was written, that was less a prohibition of abortion and more a matter of pregnancy and abortion being under the purview of midwives, not physicians.

          To that point, I wrote my own medical oath that I will hold to because I think that things like autonomy, free choice, and dignity in death are actually important.

          • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Thank you for clarifying, I did not know that about the Hippocratic Oath. I think it’s really cool that you wrote your own Oath. Thank you for your empathy and service to humankind.

            • medgremlin@lemmy.sdf.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              The medical school I’m currently in is an Osteopathic school that leans pretty hard into the Christian traditions/origins of osteopathy, so it’s not terribly uncommon for me to get into philosophical and ethical arguments with my classmates and professors. There are a bunch of them that I know that I’ll never change their minds about most things, but the others who listen in to those arguments might be swayed or at least given a seed of doubt to explore further.

      • irmoz@reddthat.com
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        You’d have to prove it was purely religion and not their “genuine medical opinion”.

        • snooggums@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The people refusing are openly stating that it is because of their religious beliefs. If they try to hide it then it will become apparent very quickly when their opinion always ends up with something other than the thing they oppose.

          • irmoz@reddthat.com
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            It is so easy to lie about your intentions and hide it behind legit sounding excuses, like “but you could have a child one day”.

    • Ech@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      29
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Claiming this is due to religion isn’t accurate. This happens all the time due to plain old misogyny. Women have a tough time getting proper medical treatment at all, not just when it overlaps with religious fruitcakes.

      • Peaty@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        Because medicine doesn’t require you to be atheistic and after a while some really need something that can provide hope however irrational that might be?

      • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I mean it’s pretty easy. It doesn’t make a good marketing campaign for atheism, but the correlation between education and irreligion seems to be causal the other way. Being irreligious leads one towards more education, but becoming educated does not lead one away from religion… Getting a physics degree or medical degree just does not make you less religious.

          • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            One thing people leave out is that there is a LOT to religion and spirituality. Christianity, for example, is not entirely defined in terms of rejecting evolution. That’s just a (tiny) part of their beliefs. When you start in a science-denying religion (worst-case scenario), it’s still only a small percent of your beliefs that contradict the science. So some people stay believers and deny the contradictory science… others stay believers “except the science”.

            Many people adhere to non-science-denying religions. So while they are naturally less likely to pick a science major, if they DO pick a science major, nothing in it will knock them out of their faith.

          • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            That’s true, I witnessed it firsthand, and it’s still baffling to me. Going for a degree in biblical studies and apologetics at a religious university whose draconian fundamentalist views I fully aligned with when I entered is ironically what caused me to actually question the “biblical inerrancy” doctrinal belief.

            Reminds me of

            Very few people come out of law school sovereign citizens.

            -Scathing Atheist podcast

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        The human mind is something else. I work with so many skydaddy fearing engineers. Utterly freaken brilliant people without which civilization ends in fire and feces.

      • AquaTofana@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I was struggling with Biology for my associates degree back in 2007. I happened to teach Tae Kwon Do to the daughter of one of the state university Biology professors (I was only in community College at the time) and I asked the mom to tutor me.

        And goddamn. As smart as she was regarding Biology, she bought into Christianity hook, line, and sinker (her husband was a pastor).

      • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Except it doesn;t. Right now, roughly 20% of all hospitals in the US are owned by a religion; most are Catholic, and about 1/4 of them are ‘some other religion’. That is up from 12% is 1995. What that means is that, in many cases–especially when it’s an emergency–you won’t have any choice at all except to accept religion-tainted healthcare.

        I’ve lived in places where the only option covered by my insurance was religions.

          • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            It’s becoming a religion issue as Catholic groups take over more and more hospitals, because they’re going to eliminate health care for things that are against their religious principles.

            IMO healthcare should not be permitted to have religion interfering.

    • LavaPlanet@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      We could start our own list. When I say “we” I mean someone else, because I’m both not smart enough to build that, and not in the right place in the world.