Debate discussion

"Our goverment is currently trying to pass a law that makes a doctor refusing to abort a baby illegal. This would include baby's who are born and alive due to a failed abortion. The law would force any and every doctor to have to abort a child, whether it be 9 weeks or 9 months old, if the mother wants them to. So my question to you is, how can people see this law as constitutionally righteous? Our constitution clearly tells us that we have freedom, whether it be of religion, press, or choice. "

There is no way the government would legalized the murder of a actually born baby. Cite this please.

I would just like to put some perspective to this.

You walk into a library. You live in a free country and you can read whatever you like. You look around, there are no books.

Abortion might be legal, but if there isn't anybody to preform it the right is void.

Go Liz!

I don't know the specifics of the law to which you are referring, so I won't comment on those. As for the idea of a docter being "forced" to perform abortions, consider a few things. First, as you said, we shouldn't discuss whether or not abortion is acceptable in this thread, as that's not the issue and there are plenty of other threads about that. So, since abortion is currently legal in the US, let's, for the sake of argument, assume that it is an acceptable medical procedure. If it were not, the entire issue would be moot.

Now, imagine you are in need of a medical procedure. You go to the doctor for this procedure, and the doctor refuses to give it to you. Is this fair? Insert any procedure you'd like: apendectomy, spinal tap, cast for a broken limb, etc. Any of these procedures are legal, and any of these procedures could be considered immoral by your doctor. Should your doctor be allowed to deny you any of these procedures?

This isn't an irrelevent hypothetical. A number of religions hold prohibitions on various medical procedures. Christian Scientists are opposed to many forms of medical treatment. Scientologists are opposed to psychiatry. There are two issues at play here: whether abortion is right or wrong, and whether doctors denying treatment for personal reasons is right or wrong. We're not talking about the first issue, so, when considering the second, we have to consider the principle as it applies to all real or potential scenarios, not just abortion.

The bottom line is that being a doctor is a job with a number of requirements. It is reasonable to expect people to do their jobs or face consequences. When those jobs impact public health or safety, the consequences often extend beyond simply getting fired. Now, again, I don't know the specifics of this bill, but I doubt it is requiring, say, orthodontists to perform abortions.

You say that denying doctors the right to choose is taking away their freedom. But what does this mean? What freedom is this? Our country's fundamental attitude towards freedom is to strike a balance between personal and collective freedom. Personal freedoms are protected so long as they do not infringe on others' freedoms. That is, freedoms are protected for all by placing restrictions on actions that could compromise these freedoms (i.e. certain freedoms are protected by limiting others). The "freedom" of a doctor to choose whether or not to treat patients is the freedom to impose his or her will on these patients. This would deny patients the freedom to control their own health.

So ask yourself, is it right for a Scientologist pharmacist or psychiatrist to deny prescriptions to a bipolar patient? Is it right for a Christian Scientist surgeon to refuse to remove an inflamed appendix? Is it right for a Jehovah's Witness doctor to refuse a blood transfusion to a patient with sickle-cell anemia? Is it right for a doctor who belongs to the End Time Ministries to refuse to treat cancer with anything other than prayer?

All of the above scenarios are logically necessitated by acceptance of the principle you propose - "freedom of choice." If you think that any of them are wrong, then you obviously do not subscribe to the principle. Instead, you subscribe to the idea only with respect to select cases, such as abortion. In this case, the onus is on you to demonstrate why abortion is somehow different from these other cases, or why the ideaologies that would cause a doctor to disapprove of it are somehow different from these other religious, anti-medical idealogies. This would probably bring us back to the discussion of whether or not abortion is wrong, so good luck with that.

And why the fuck would be an abortion doctor in the first place if you're against it.

I agree Lauren. That does seem very ridiculous.

there will always be another doctor who could step forward and due the denied procedure. Refusing to do an abortion would not take away the rights to have health care, it will only mean another docotr would have to do the procedure.

This is simply not always the case. In rural areas, doctors, pharmacists, and other people shirking their responsibilities under the cover of "conscience clauses" are sometimes few and far between. And if you're defending a principle by saying that there's a way around it, that isn't a defense for a principle. It's an excuse.

I sincerely doubt this bill is even being proposed.

Yeah