LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY theonides)



David Teather in New York
Monday December 5, 2005
The Guardian


A United States appeal court has backed two fertility doctors who refused to treat a lesbian patient because it would have violated their religious beliefs.
The woman, Guadalupe Benitez, sued the doctors after she was turned down for artificial insemination in 1999. She claimed that on her first visit to the women's clinic in a suburb of San Diego, California, one of the doctors, Christine Brody, told her that she would not perform the procedure on a lesbian because of her faith.

She was initially told that another doctor at the clinic would perform the procedure but after nearly a year of being put off, Ms Benitez alleges that Dr Brody told her nobody in the four-person clinic would treat her. The other doctor named in the suit is Douglas Fenton.
The appeal court ruling allows the doctors to use religious liberty as a defence in the anti-discrimination lawsuit. The decision overturned a lower court ruling.

The case has been closely watched across the US - testing as it does the overlapping rights of the increasingly political religious community and the gay community. The California Medical Association and the Christian Medical and Dental Association joined in the doctors' defence.

Jennifer Pizer, a lawyer for the gay rights group Lambda Legal Defence, said the case was the first in the US to allow a gay man or lesbian to sue doctors on allegations that treatment had been denied because of sexual orientation. The case has still to reach trial.

She said the latest ruling would be appealed against at the California supreme court. "We fear this decision is going to worsen the confusion in the minds of the public about whether you can legally discriminate in the name of religion," Ms Pizer, who represents Ms Benitez, told Associated Press. "The bottom line is that you should not be able to treat patients in a discriminatory way."

The appeal court ruled in favour of the doctors because the medical centre argued that it had refused Ms Benitez treatment because she was unmarried. Discrimination based on marital status is not explicitly prohibited in California.

Lawyers for Ms Benitez argued that the issue of marriage was a legal smokescreen. They argued that in any case California law prevented her from marrying her partner of 15 years.

Ms Benitez, 33, was treated elsewhere and now has a three-year-old boy.

Hi, I've been lurking. I don't recall if this original story was posted before, but this is an update in any case. Article source here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1657878,00.html