Dark Christianity
dark_christian
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May 2008
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Latest in "moral refusal"--refusing reproductive services to gay/les/bi folks

Per http://news.yahoo.com/s/ct/20051212/cr_ct/lesbiandoctorsdeniedartificialinseminationbecauseofreligion the "moral refusal" movement in dominionist circles is now targeting reproductive services for gay/les/bi folks:

A lesbian woman will challenge an appeals court ruling that permitted two doctors to claim a religious defense in their refusal to artificially inseminate her.

A California appeals court last week sided with the doctors, Christine Brody and Douglas Fenton, saying they can claim religious liberty in refusing to treat a patient who was gay because it was against their Christian beliefs.

Guadalupe Benitez filed a sexual-orientation discrimination suit against the doctors at a San Diego women's clinic after they refused to artificially inseminate her in 2000.

Benitez claims that on her first visit, Brody informed her that while her religious principles precluded her from performing the procedure on a gay woman, another doctor in the clinic would.

Benitez says, however, that after 11 months of costly, painful tests and surgeries, when the time came for the insemination procedure, she was turned down and told that she "would not be treated fairly" or "get timely care" at the clinic because of Dr. Brody's and other staff members' religious beliefs.

The doctors' lawyer, Carlo Coppo, said his clients were committed to fair treatment of Benitez — from fertilization to pregnancy and birth — but that aiding the actual act of conception compromised their religious views.

"[Brody] believes that participating in the [fertilization procedure], she is acting as the male," Coppo said. "It is an elective, invasive procedure, and to be there for the moment of conception, she religiously can't participate."

Benitez's attorney, Jennifer Pizer, said the appeals court ruling was troubling because it opened the door to all kinds of discrimination.

"It certainly is a social problem and a legal problem if someone enters a commercial business and can be told they will not receive the same services that another person can," Pizer said.

Both attorneys agree the case is the first of its kind and tests whether a doctor can choose who to treat based on religious beliefs.

Coppo says denying doctors their religious rights is also a form of discrimination, and that the law allows doctors to choose who they treat consistent with their religious convictions as long as they offer alternative means for care.

Pizer says a doctor's religious freedoms should not come at the expense of a patient's care.

If the courts rule in favour of the clinic, this could open the floodgates to dominionist doctors flat out refusing to render any medical treatment--even lifesaving treatment--to people simply because they think they are gay or disagree with "lifestyle" of the person they're treating (even more so than they are open already--Mississippi's law, and proposed laws in two other states, are *already* so broad as to allow any medical professional to refuse to treat you simply because you may be gay or pagan and they feel treating you would "violate their morals").

I've posted a summary of the various threads on "Moral refusal clauses" that I've done here on Dark Christianity in past. Dominionists will *not* be satisfied unless and until they not only can completely control people's reproductive (and other) destinies but they also hope to establish a sort of "medical apartheid" in which people will have to submit to dominionist rule or else. Convert or die, literally. They literally want to have the legal choice to allow someone to die because they are not a dominionist. They've admitted this to their own.

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