Exactly the same? I've never understood this line of reasoning. Jehova's witnesses believe blood transfusions are wrong, so I don't think they should be forced to perform them.
Does the fact that these are often emergency situations where the person in need of help doesn't get to decide where they are treated enter into this line of thinking?
I'm not sure why it would. Perhaps you could elaborate on where you are coming from?
You're never going to get these people to agree to murder. You realize that, right?
So recognize that your choice isn't whether or not they will murder under your conditions, but whether or not you will allow these hospitals to exist at all.
It is hardly their fault that their county is so inept as to not provide any other hospitals. Ultimately you are just putting more and more people in danger by shutting down "1 in 6 hospital beds" in the country.
These people are making decisions that are causing serious harm including long-term injury and even death (yes, this particular case didn't result in a death; some have). Their private definition of 'murder' does not give them blank slate to continue to cause this harm.
The absolute furthest I could see accepting would be if Catholic hospitals could take these stances if and only if A) the surrounding region has another suitable emergency care facility and B) emergency vehicles are required to go to the other hospital, not the Catholic one. If the Catholic hospital was willing to agree to refer those cases, we could be a lot more lenient.
In your Apple example, the Church is not deciding that you cannot eat an apple today, the Church is deciding that it will not sell apples.
In this particular case they're also the only people selling food.
It requires a very Libertarian type of thinking ("A starving man can totally have an equal exchange with a baker!") to pretend that there is no responsibility to provide the best medical care they are capable of in this situation. This was a medically necessary abortion and there was no time to move the patient elsewhere.
We can talk about moral relativism but its only worth applying in practice to topics people don't care about. Their morality obligates them to make this action, and I appreciate that, but my morality obligates me to take every action to stop them.
Are you saying doctors are not making a decision for themselves when they do not want to (in their view) commit murder? I don't think your example works in this situation...
No I'm saying they're deciding for themselves if they want to torture these women.
Also, the "murder" argument doesn't really hold since Catholics do not treat abortion as anything close to murder in practice. If you request an abortion in a Catholic hospital they'll try to talk you out of it but let you go to another hospital. If you request to murder someone in a Catholic hospital they'll do everything in their power to top you.
In your Apple example, the Church is not deciding that you cannot eat an apple today, the Church is deciding that it will not sell apples.
In this particular case they're also the only people selling food.
Which is not exactly something you can blame them for. They are not preventing others from opening hospitals. The fact that others have not opened hospitals that do provide the services they do not is not somehow their fault.
It requires a very Libertarian type of thinking ("A starving man can totally have an equal exchange with a baker!") to pretend that there is no responsibility to provide the best medical care they are capable of in this situation. This was a medically necessary abortion and there was no time to move the patient elsewhere.
How was there no time to move the patient? After she first came she was discharged and returned later. There was time for her to go somewhere else. The other thing you are neglecting is that they (assuming there is no other neglect we don't know of) did provide what they thought was the best care to all the parties involved.
The fact that you disagree with them on what constitutes the best care is an issue, yes, but you can't say they knew something else was better care and declined to provide it. Well, you can but you're lying if you do.
We can talk about moral relativism but its only worth applying in practice to topics people don't care about. Their morality obligates them to make this action, and I appreciate that, but my morality obligates me to take every action to stop them.
You have that 100% backwards. What you said:
"heir morality obligates them to make this action, and I appreciate that, but my morality obligates me to take every action to stop them."
But what is at issue is their refusal to take an action. What you should have said, if you were to be honest about the situation, was:
"Their morality obligates them to not to make this action, and I appreciate that, but my morality obligates me to take every action to [strikethrough]stop them[/strikethrough] force them to."
You may not, but I see a HUGE gaping distinction between forcing someone to do an action and prohibiting someone from doing an action.
Doctors are in a special position where their occupation should supercede their religious beliefs. What should be looked at here is whether or not aborting the fetus is the widely accepted medical practice in this case. If it is, I can see the council being held liable for their actions.
If docotra are instead directed to just pray for their patients instead of performing lifesaving surgery on them when the patient has no say in the matter through either physical reasons or the withholding of pertinent medical advice, those who directed the doctors to do such should be held just as liable as the doctors.
Doctors are in a special position where their occupation should supercede their religious beliefs.
No, it shouldn't. Religious protection exists for a reason, and your notion or any other "supercede" argument creates the slippery slope that leads to no religious protection. We live in a world of escalation and there must be some very basic and very essential things that are untouchable and immutable.
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CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
Religious protections exist for several reasons. One of them (as best espoused by Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Baptists of Danbury) is to protect the differently-religious from being harmed as a result of the presence or influence of a majority religion.
It is the great tragedy of these types of debates that very profound questions like Jay13x's simply go ignored. Mainstream Christians who feel safely in the majority are fashioning a rod for their own back without realizing it. What will you do if the Christian Scientists or the Jehovah's Witnesses gain ascendancy and you are denied essential medical care because your doctor believes it's his religious right to deviate from the medically-optimal decision and your religious right to not be forced to conform to the diktats of a religion that is not yours is being ignored?
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Doctors are in a special position where their occupation should supercede their religious beliefs.
No, it shouldn't. Religious protection exists for a reason, and your notion or any other "supercede" argument creates the slippery slope that leads to no religious protection. We live in a world of escalation and there must be some very basic and very essential things that are untouchable and immutable.
If you're in an occupation where your religious beliefs jeopardize other people's lives, you can bet you are afforded no such protection. Christian Scientists aren't allowed to scribble "Pray it away!" on all their exams and become doctors.
The slipper slope goes both ways. I wonder if there's religions who hold income sacred and find it's taxation to be the highest of sins?
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What's the big deal? You could have played multiple Righteous Avengers for years now.
It is the great tragedy of these types of debates that very profound questions like Jay13x's simply go ignored. Mainstream Christians who feel safely in the majority are fashioning a rod for their own back without realizing it. What will you do if the Christian Scientists or the Jehovah's Witnesses gain ascendancy and you are denied essential medical care because your doctor believes it's his religious right to deviate from the medically-optimal decision and your religious right to not be forced to conform to the diktats of a religion that is not yours is being ignored?
Perhaps you didn't see my response (but then maybe you did?) -- I would recognize that it is not right to force any entity to perform an action that violates their moral and ethical standards.
What I would do in that case is work towards creating a hospital that performs that treatment, not force someone who is morally opposed to it to perform the treatment.
If the Catholic hospitals had any form of a Monopoly you may have legit standing to say they should be forced to perform the procedures. BUT THEY DON'T. There is nothing stopping a secular humanists (as a random example) society from raising the funding and starting a hospital.
Let me add that any religious issue is going to trigger strict scrutiny, and I can't think of anything the ACLU can come up with that will pass muster.
Are the claims posted anywhere online?
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Perhaps you didn't see my response (but then maybe you did?) -- I would recognize that it is not right to force any entity to perform an action that violates their moral and ethical standards.
What I would do in that case is work towards creating a hospital that performs that treatment, not force someone who is morally opposed to it to perform the treatment.
I am not opposing this position; certainly I would prefer to have a wide variety of secular hospitals available everywhere and the ability for injured people to have a preference 'flag' on their record that causes them to be taken to secular hospitals by emergency crews. Unfortunately, neither of these things are true.
My counter-proposal is this: you are not allowed to label your facility a "hospital," you are not allowed to call your staff "doctors," and you are not permitted to have patients delivered to you by ambulatory service, or in any way that is not strictly voluntary on the patient's part, if for any reason or in any situation you refuse to provide the best care you are able to.
If the Catholic hospitals had any form of a Monopoly you may have legit standing to say they should be forced to perform the procedures. BUT THEY DON'T.
In most states, ambulatory crews are required by law to take unstable or uncommunicative patients to the physically closest hospital that is capable of treating the condition. Unless your argument is that it is never the case that this hospital is Catholic, then they do, in effect, have a monopoly. In fact, this system means that every hospital has a de facto monopoly on its particular Voronoi cell of the diagram consisting of all hospitals.
There is nothing stopping a secular humanists (as a random example) society from raising the funding and starting a hospital.
No, but the severity of one's condition may prevent one from being taken to that hospital for treatment. When it comes to life threatening situations, you take what you get and your trauma caregiver has an effective monopoly.
Crashing: define best care, not including the context of this discussion in any way.
Removed from your opinion on the availability of abortion, I'm sure that the doctors in this case would fall into any definition you could come up with
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Crashing: define best care, not including the context of this discussion in any way.
Not being a medical professional, I won't pretend to be able to provide any kind of exact definition for "best care."
In the absence of the exact definition I will say that there is one obvious property that "the best care you are able" has: if you were able to provide better care, then you did not provide the best care you were able to.
So a doctor who without the consent of the patient fails to perform a recommended procedure that he was able to perform, causing harm to the patient as a result of his deviation from correct medical practice, is obviously not delivering the best care he is able -- he could have provided better care by following the procedure and so the care he provided was not the best.
Removed from your opinion on the availability of abortion, I'm sure that the doctors in this case would fall into any definition you could come up with
I don't assert an opinion on the availability of abortion. Why do you think people have been talking about Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions? This point is far more general than any one stupid religious nitpick. It's about the protection of everyone (including, believe it or not, the most pro-life fundamentalist Christian you care to imagine) from being harmed by an ascendant power who religiously differs from them.
Do you think a doctor who refuses to perform a medically necessary blood transfusion on religious grounds, resulting in patient death from exsanguination, is failing to provide the best care? If so, then you agree with me to the greatest extent I'd ever ask you to as far as this discussion is concerned.
Religious protections exist for several reasons. One of them (as best espoused by Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Baptists of Danbury) is to protect the differently-religious from being harmed as a result of the presence or influence of a majority religion.
It is the great tragedy of these types of debates that very profound questions like Jay13x's simply go ignored. Mainstream Christians who feel safely in the majority are fashioning a rod for their own back without realizing it. What will you do if the Christian Scientists or the Jehovah's Witnesses gain ascendancy and you are denied essential medical care because your doctor believes it's his religious right to deviate from the medically-optimal decision and your religious right to not be forced to conform to the diktats of a religion that is not yours is being ignored?
You're almost making the Theocratic argument there.
Fortunately as mentioned Catholics or any other religion don't have a monopoly on hospitals or doctors. I don't think it's unreasonable to have religious hospitals and doctors refuse to perform certain procedures and the blanket recognition of this would go a long way towards strengthening the coordinated transportation of patients to where they need to go to get what they need done.
You want an abortion? Going to a Catholic hospital probably was the wrong move. Even in cases of emergencies I'd want there to be exclusivity in this regard and have the patient transported somewhere else.
At some point you have to say cry me a river to these people suing and protesting. People want changes to suit either their whim, philosophy or bias and the end result is a society constantly on edge having to jump through this hoop or that one. If a religious group has their own hospitals you should expect that the care you're able to receive there will comply with their views, the same as if its a doctor. If you're in a non religious hospital but dealing with a religious doctor, get another ****ing doctor and quit asking that people discard what is sacred to them.
For those who are neither here nor there on this, none of it is relevant as long as the doctor performs. This is an issue primarily for or against religious discretion of which I am personally for even if I was in need of emergency care.
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CAMILLA: You, sir, should unmask.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
I'm not sure why it would. Perhaps you could elaborate on where you are coming from?
In an emergency scenario, delayed action can be the difference between life and death. The time wasted by a hospital unwilling to perform proper medicine on you may kill you.
(assume here that the Fetus is a life fully deserving of personhood, because thats what the hospital ethics committee is assuming)
That's a rather large assumption. Until the fetus is viable on its own the balance between the health of the mother and fetus is the overriding concern. A non-viable fetus' rights should never be considered more important the mother's without the mother's consent.
There is a distinction between choosing which of two independent patients to treat, and killing one patient in order to save the other. In the first case, yes triage makes sense. In the other case, triage works -- but only under utilitarian (or at least partially utilitarian) ethics. Other ethical systems have an different outcome.
Time sensitive emergency medicine would value utilitarian ethics, would it not? There isn't actually a difference between the ethics of an EMT triaging disaster victims and the ethics of an Emergency Room Doctor with limited resources.
If the ethical harm of ending one life exceeds the ethical harm of waiting and seeing, then the abortion is wrong. The CCB would argue that the child in this case was given an immense gift of 2.5 hours of independent life. You may disagree with that, but you have to at least recognize that that is their position.
I recognize the position, and now that I'm calmed down a bit (several contentious threads posting at once frayed my nerves), I respect it more.
However, quality of life is the major concern here, for me. 'Getting' to experience 2.5 extra hours of life means almost nothing to a fetus. They may be capable of thought, but they've no context with which to judge their experience or gain value from it, and in complications that would end the life of the fetus are probably just getting an extra 2.5 hours of pain, if they're actually conscious it at all. That's cruel. The only people it helps are those whose conscience it salves. And if you're sacrificing the health of the mother for what is ultimately your own conscience being eased, that's disgusting.
Nonsense. Refusing to perform a procedure you believe is morally and ethically wrong is not repugnant at all. Nor is it medically negligent in and of itself.
I'm on the fence whether it was negligence not to inform the woman that other hospitals would perform the procedure, but the refusal to do so themselves is absolutely not negligence.
You're right that refusing to do so themselves isn't negligence.
It is, however, negligent that they didn't inform the woman of her options (which is policy, according to the article). I also find it as morally repugnant as it IS forcing their beliefs on the mother.
So, you're not ok with forcing religious beliefs on patients, but you are OK with forcing religious beliefs on doctors? Not only that, but you're ok with forcing a religious organization (in fact, the largest religious organization in the world) to be liable simply for having their religious belief.
Why?
A patient is not a doctor, and has made not a commitment or oath to medicine. It is not okay for a doctor to force their beliefs on a patient, especially when those beliefs harm the patient.
Science and medicine are not religious beliefs. If you have tools at your disposal to save the health of your patient, if you've accepted medical responsibility for a patient, you should do everything in your power for the health of that patient.
A hospital is not a religious organization. It's a business and a medical institution. If a religious organization wants to get involved in business, they shouldn't be allowed to play by different standards and rules than other businesses, especially when the business is saving people's lives.
If the church wants to be involved in medicine, let them run hospice or nursing homes. Don't run hospitals and compromise patient's health.
Crashing: define best care, not including the context of this discussion in any way.
Not being a medical professional, I won't pretend to be able to provide any kind of exact definition for "best care."
In the absence of the exact definition I will say that there is one obvious property that "the best care you are able" has: if you were able to provide better care, then you did not provide the best care you were able to.
So a doctor who without the consent of the patient fails to perform a recommended procedure that he was able to perform, causing harm to the patient as a result of his deviation from correct medical practice, is obviously not delivering the best care he is able -- he could have provided better care by following the procedure and so the care he provided was not the best.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that (apart from being completely circular logic) to a very large number of medical professionals, attempting to save both lives is the best course of action.
There is not now, and there likely never will be in the medical community a consensus regarding the supposed best course of action in medical emergencies where abortion is an option (let alone its medical necessity - in fact, the opposite is more liekly to be true) Regardless, in ANY emergency situation, I doubt you can find find a dozen doctors who agree on what is best. I propose that best care be "providing the care that you professionally believe results in the optimum outcome." And in the case from the OP, that arguably is the decision the doctor made.
QUOTE=Crashing00;11264297]Do you think a doctor who refuses to perform a medically necessary blood transfusion on religious grounds, resulting in patient death from exsanguination, is failing to provide the best care? If so, then you agree with me to the greatest extent I'd ever ask you to as far as this discussion is concerned.[/QUOTE]
I honestly dont even think the above (abortion) discussion needs to be religious. "Potentially saving two lives" is arguably a better outcome than "more likely saving one life", whereas this example has no such argument. However, if we take into consideration religion and religious freedom, then "saving your mortal life but damning you to hell" may not be better care than "saving your soul".
I can't say that I would agree, but if I knew that my local hospital doesn't so blood transfusions I would make sure I could go somewhere that does. Ultimately, individuals need yo be more active and responsible in their healthcare
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I can't say that I would agree, but if I knew that my local hospital doesn't so blood transfusions I would make sure I could go somewhere that does. Ultimately, individuals need yo be more active and responsible in their healthcare
That may not be an option in an emergency. If you are unconscious, for instance, you don't get to choose your hospital.
You're almost making the Theocratic argument there.
...What?
Fortunately as mentioned Catholics or any other religion don't have a monopoly on hospitals or doctors.
And also as mentioned, each hospital has a de facto monopoly in its immediate area because of laws that require patients to be transported to the nearest hospital in many life-threatening scenarios.
I don't think it's unreasonable to have religious hospitals and doctors refuse to perform certain procedures and the blanket recognition of this would go a long way towards strengthening the coordinated transportation of patients to where they need to go to get what they need done.
I sort of agree. For instance, if you weren't allowed to call yourself a "doctor" if you were unwilling to practice medicine, and you weren't allowed to call yourself a "hospital" if you staffed your practice with non-doctors, then ambulances wouldn't ever drop off people who need the kind of care you won't provide and everything's hunky dory.
I have no objection to a religious institution operating a health center on private property where all patients are strictly voluntary, and where the non-doctor practitioners are able to freely refuse to follow best medical practices. However, once that institution agrees to accept non-voluntary ambulatory patients or any type of public funding, it's obliged to follow best medical practices.
You want an abortion? Going to a Catholic hospital probably was the wrong move.
"You're a Catholic who never wants to be in a situation of needing to terminate a pregnancy? Becoming an OBGYN was probably the wrong move."
The problem with this line of reasoning is that (apart from being completely circular logic)
It's not circular. It's the definition of "best" -- if there's a better thing than yours out there, yours isn't the best.
to a very large number of medical professionals, attempting to save both lives is the best course of action. There is not now, and there likely never will be in the medical community a consensus regarding the supposed best course of action in medical emergencies where abortion is an option (let alone its medical necessity - in fact, the opposite is more liekly to be true) Regardless, in ANY emergency situation, I doubt you can find find a dozen doctors who agree on what is best. I propose that best care be "providing the care that you professionally believe results in the optimum outcome." And in the case from the OP, that arguably is the decision the doctor made.
I think you're addressing something other the question at hand. I don't think anyone is trying to (and very few people are qualified to) second-guess the medical knowledge of the doctor involved in this incident. Certainly I'm not. You might be right; the doctor may have legitimately believed he could have saved both lives and had an objective medical basis for thinking so. If he did then the whole lawsuit is bull, because the doctor was trying to provide the best care.
The scenario that I'm interested in -- and I agree that this may differ from what actually happened -- is where a procedure is known and agreed to be medically necessary but is still not performed because the doctor refuses on non-medical grounds.
However, if we take into consideration religion and religious freedom, then "saving your mortal life but damning you to hell" may not be better care than "saving your soul".
But you're only taking into consideration the religious freedom of one party! Both parties in this scenario have religious freedom. The patient has as much right not to be harmed by the dictates of the doctor's religion as the doctor has the right to practice those dictates so long as they don't cause harm.
I can't say that I would agree, but if I knew that my local hospital doesn't so blood transfusions I would make sure I could go somewhere that does. Ultimately, individuals need yo be more active and responsible in their healthcare
Suppose you're far from home, your throat's cut, you're bleeding out, and you can't speak or otherwise communicate your preference clearly. The nearest hospital, to which the ambulance is required by law to take you as an unstable, uncommunicative patient in mortal danger, refuses to provide blood transfusions on moral grounds. You will exsanguinate without one. What then?
This is my point. It is deceptive, disingenous, and frankly dangerous for a person to label himself a "doctor" if he refuses to provide medically necessary care, it is a lie for a building to be labeled a "hospital" if it's medical staff aren't actually doctors, and it is wrong for an ambulance to involuntarily transport a person to somewhere other than a hospital.
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A limit of time is fixed for thee
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
'Just Harm' is a Catholic doctrine that you're missing on the earlier pages bLatch. Usually in regards to war but expandable toother types of harm, its an important one for doctors for it to exist since without 'just harm' surgery wouldn't exist. Nor would most medicines since they have known interactions and toxicities.
In a case where it wouldn't prevent further harm, you're absolutely right - when it comes to one to prevent further harm it gets murky.
Take 'abortion' and religion as issues out of this and instead look at it from the perspective of a hospital failing to provide a life-saving treatment because of 'ethical' guidance. Ethical guidance that encourages the withholding of life-sustaining treatments.
You can take abortion out of it but your still dealing with a life that is about to be born. Either way you turn on this specfiic case you are ending a life. I do not think there is a right answer to this. I'm not even sure if there is a pragmatic answer.
The fact that you disagree with them on what constitutes the best care is an issue, yes, but you can't say they knew something else was better care and declined to provide it. Well, you can but you're lying if you do.
Yes they did, they intentionally waited until she had become septic and was in danger of dying to perform an operation they could have performed earlier. That's Catholic doctrine about sanctity of life.
I have zero respect for that. ZERO Z E R O.
If you think there's something morally wrong about forcing a person to stop torturing a person you have the most disgusting moral system I have ever encountered.
You may not, but I see a HUGE gaping distinction between forcing someone to do an action and prohibiting someone from doing an action.
All prohibitions are enforced by force. There is never a meaningful difference. It's as silly as "negative rights" and such.
"I prohibit guns in here!"
"Are you going to take it away if I come in?"
"Yeah?"
"So you're going to use force?"
"No."
"You're either insane or very stupid."
As for moral relativism, it is nonsensical to respect the moral beliefs of people who do not respect your moral beliefs, it's really just giving up on your own beliefs. I have no problem forcing Catholics to provide medically necessary abortions against their will because I believe that their refusal is evil just as strongly as they believe the protecting the lives of the sick and dying is evil. I'm not going to offer myself up to cannibals because I respect their beliefs either.
You're never going to get these people to agree to murder. You realize that, right?
So recognize that your choice isn't whether or not they will murder under your conditions, but whether or not you will allow these hospitals to exist at all.
Are you one of those guys that thinks that women should never get an abortion under any circumstances, including to save the life of the mother?
Because that's pretty pro-death to me.
(Under American law murder is unlawful killing, not what your feelings say.)
If the Catholic hospitals had any form of a Monopoly you may have legit standing to say they should be forced to perform the procedures. BUT THEY DON'T. There is nothing stopping a secular humanists (as a random example) society from raising the funding and starting a hospital.
They have a monopoly on hospitals in rural areas. In a county I work in, the closest hospital is a Catholic one 45 minutes away.
I'm not sure why it would. Perhaps you could elaborate on where you are coming from?
These people are making decisions that are causing serious harm including long-term injury and even death (yes, this particular case didn't result in a death; some have). Their private definition of 'murder' does not give them blank slate to continue to cause this harm.
The absolute furthest I could see accepting would be if Catholic hospitals could take these stances if and only if A) the surrounding region has another suitable emergency care facility and B) emergency vehicles are required to go to the other hospital, not the Catholic one. If the Catholic hospital was willing to agree to refer those cases, we could be a lot more lenient.
In this particular case they're also the only people selling food.
It requires a very Libertarian type of thinking ("A starving man can totally have an equal exchange with a baker!") to pretend that there is no responsibility to provide the best medical care they are capable of in this situation. This was a medically necessary abortion and there was no time to move the patient elsewhere.
We can talk about moral relativism but its only worth applying in practice to topics people don't care about. Their morality obligates them to make this action, and I appreciate that, but my morality obligates me to take every action to stop them.
No I'm saying they're deciding for themselves if they want to torture these women.
Also, the "murder" argument doesn't really hold since Catholics do not treat abortion as anything close to murder in practice. If you request an abortion in a Catholic hospital they'll try to talk you out of it but let you go to another hospital. If you request to murder someone in a Catholic hospital they'll do everything in their power to top you.
Which is not exactly something you can blame them for. They are not preventing others from opening hospitals. The fact that others have not opened hospitals that do provide the services they do not is not somehow their fault.
How was there no time to move the patient? After she first came she was discharged and returned later. There was time for her to go somewhere else. The other thing you are neglecting is that they (assuming there is no other neglect we don't know of) did provide what they thought was the best care to all the parties involved.
The fact that you disagree with them on what constitutes the best care is an issue, yes, but you can't say they knew something else was better care and declined to provide it. Well, you can but you're lying if you do.
You have that 100% backwards. What you said:
"heir morality obligates them to make this action, and I appreciate that, but my morality obligates me to take every action to stop them."
But what is at issue is their refusal to take an action. What you should have said, if you were to be honest about the situation, was:
"Their morality obligates them to not to make this action, and I appreciate that, but my morality obligates me to take every action to [strikethrough]stop them[/strikethrough] force them to."
You may not, but I see a HUGE gaping distinction between forcing someone to do an action and prohibiting someone from doing an action.
Edit: Is strikethrough not a BBS code?
If docotra are instead directed to just pray for their patients instead of performing lifesaving surgery on them when the patient has no say in the matter through either physical reasons or the withholding of pertinent medical advice, those who directed the doctors to do such should be held just as liable as the doctors.
No, it shouldn't. Religious protection exists for a reason, and your notion or any other "supercede" argument creates the slippery slope that leads to no religious protection. We live in a world of escalation and there must be some very basic and very essential things that are untouchable and immutable.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
Religious protections exist for several reasons. One of them (as best espoused by Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Baptists of Danbury) is to protect the differently-religious from being harmed as a result of the presence or influence of a majority religion.
It is the great tragedy of these types of debates that very profound questions like Jay13x's simply go ignored. Mainstream Christians who feel safely in the majority are fashioning a rod for their own back without realizing it. What will you do if the Christian Scientists or the Jehovah's Witnesses gain ascendancy and you are denied essential medical care because your doctor believes it's his religious right to deviate from the medically-optimal decision and your religious right to not be forced to conform to the diktats of a religion that is not yours is being ignored?
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
If you're in an occupation where your religious beliefs jeopardize other people's lives, you can bet you are afforded no such protection. Christian Scientists aren't allowed to scribble "Pray it away!" on all their exams and become doctors.
The slipper slope goes both ways. I wonder if there's religions who hold income sacred and find it's taxation to be the highest of sins?
Perhaps you didn't see my response (but then maybe you did?) -- I would recognize that it is not right to force any entity to perform an action that violates their moral and ethical standards.
What I would do in that case is work towards creating a hospital that performs that treatment, not force someone who is morally opposed to it to perform the treatment.
If the Catholic hospitals had any form of a Monopoly you may have legit standing to say they should be forced to perform the procedures. BUT THEY DON'T. There is nothing stopping a secular humanists (as a random example) society from raising the funding and starting a hospital.
Are the claims posted anywhere online?
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I am not opposing this position; certainly I would prefer to have a wide variety of secular hospitals available everywhere and the ability for injured people to have a preference 'flag' on their record that causes them to be taken to secular hospitals by emergency crews. Unfortunately, neither of these things are true.
My counter-proposal is this: you are not allowed to label your facility a "hospital," you are not allowed to call your staff "doctors," and you are not permitted to have patients delivered to you by ambulatory service, or in any way that is not strictly voluntary on the patient's part, if for any reason or in any situation you refuse to provide the best care you are able to.
In most states, ambulatory crews are required by law to take unstable or uncommunicative patients to the physically closest hospital that is capable of treating the condition. Unless your argument is that it is never the case that this hospital is Catholic, then they do, in effect, have a monopoly. In fact, this system means that every hospital has a de facto monopoly on its particular Voronoi cell of the diagram consisting of all hospitals.
No, but the severity of one's condition may prevent one from being taken to that hospital for treatment. When it comes to life threatening situations, you take what you get and your trauma caregiver has an effective monopoly.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
Removed from your opinion on the availability of abortion, I'm sure that the doctors in this case would fall into any definition you could come up with
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Not being a medical professional, I won't pretend to be able to provide any kind of exact definition for "best care."
In the absence of the exact definition I will say that there is one obvious property that "the best care you are able" has: if you were able to provide better care, then you did not provide the best care you were able to.
So a doctor who without the consent of the patient fails to perform a recommended procedure that he was able to perform, causing harm to the patient as a result of his deviation from correct medical practice, is obviously not delivering the best care he is able -- he could have provided better care by following the procedure and so the care he provided was not the best.
I don't assert an opinion on the availability of abortion. Why do you think people have been talking about Jehovah's Witnesses and blood transfusions? This point is far more general than any one stupid religious nitpick. It's about the protection of everyone (including, believe it or not, the most pro-life fundamentalist Christian you care to imagine) from being harmed by an ascendant power who religiously differs from them.
Do you think a doctor who refuses to perform a medically necessary blood transfusion on religious grounds, resulting in patient death from exsanguination, is failing to provide the best care? If so, then you agree with me to the greatest extent I'd ever ask you to as far as this discussion is concerned.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
You're almost making the Theocratic argument there.
Fortunately as mentioned Catholics or any other religion don't have a monopoly on hospitals or doctors. I don't think it's unreasonable to have religious hospitals and doctors refuse to perform certain procedures and the blanket recognition of this would go a long way towards strengthening the coordinated transportation of patients to where they need to go to get what they need done.
You want an abortion? Going to a Catholic hospital probably was the wrong move. Even in cases of emergencies I'd want there to be exclusivity in this regard and have the patient transported somewhere else.
At some point you have to say cry me a river to these people suing and protesting. People want changes to suit either their whim, philosophy or bias and the end result is a society constantly on edge having to jump through this hoop or that one. If a religious group has their own hospitals you should expect that the care you're able to receive there will comply with their views, the same as if its a doctor. If you're in a non religious hospital but dealing with a religious doctor, get another ****ing doctor and quit asking that people discard what is sacred to them.
For those who are neither here nor there on this, none of it is relevant as long as the doctor performs. This is an issue primarily for or against religious discretion of which I am personally for even if I was in need of emergency care.
STRANGER: Indeed?
CASSILDA: Indeed it's time. We all have laid aside disguise but you.
STRANGER: I wear no mask.
CAMILLA: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!
That's a rather large assumption. Until the fetus is viable on its own the balance between the health of the mother and fetus is the overriding concern. A non-viable fetus' rights should never be considered more important the mother's without the mother's consent.
Time sensitive emergency medicine would value utilitarian ethics, would it not? There isn't actually a difference between the ethics of an EMT triaging disaster victims and the ethics of an Emergency Room Doctor with limited resources.
I recognize the position, and now that I'm calmed down a bit (several contentious threads posting at once frayed my nerves), I respect it more.
However, quality of life is the major concern here, for me. 'Getting' to experience 2.5 extra hours of life means almost nothing to a fetus. They may be capable of thought, but they've no context with which to judge their experience or gain value from it, and in complications that would end the life of the fetus are probably just getting an extra 2.5 hours of pain, if they're actually conscious it at all. That's cruel. The only people it helps are those whose conscience it salves. And if you're sacrificing the health of the mother for what is ultimately your own conscience being eased, that's disgusting.
You're right that refusing to do so themselves isn't negligence.
It is, however, negligent that they didn't inform the woman of her options (which is policy, according to the article). I also find it as morally repugnant as it IS forcing their beliefs on the mother.
A patient is not a doctor, and has made not a commitment or oath to medicine. It is not okay for a doctor to force their beliefs on a patient, especially when those beliefs harm the patient.
Science and medicine are not religious beliefs. If you have tools at your disposal to save the health of your patient, if you've accepted medical responsibility for a patient, you should do everything in your power for the health of that patient.
A hospital is not a religious organization. It's a business and a medical institution. If a religious organization wants to get involved in business, they shouldn't be allowed to play by different standards and rules than other businesses, especially when the business is saving people's lives.
If the church wants to be involved in medicine, let them run hospice or nursing homes. Don't run hospitals and compromise patient's health.
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The problem with this line of reasoning is that (apart from being completely circular logic) to a very large number of medical professionals, attempting to save both lives is the best course of action.
There is not now, and there likely never will be in the medical community a consensus regarding the supposed best course of action in medical emergencies where abortion is an option (let alone its medical necessity - in fact, the opposite is more liekly to be true) Regardless, in ANY emergency situation, I doubt you can find find a dozen doctors who agree on what is best. I propose that best care be "providing the care that you professionally believe results in the optimum outcome." And in the case from the OP, that arguably is the decision the doctor made.
QUOTE=Crashing00;11264297]Do you think a doctor who refuses to perform a medically necessary blood transfusion on religious grounds, resulting in patient death from exsanguination, is failing to provide the best care? If so, then you agree with me to the greatest extent I'd ever ask you to as far as this discussion is concerned.[/QUOTE]
I honestly dont even think the above (abortion) discussion needs to be religious. "Potentially saving two lives" is arguably a better outcome than "more likely saving one life", whereas this example has no such argument. However, if we take into consideration religion and religious freedom, then "saving your mortal life but damning you to hell" may not be better care than "saving your soul".
I can't say that I would agree, but if I knew that my local hospital doesn't so blood transfusions I would make sure I could go somewhere that does. Ultimately, individuals need yo be more active and responsible in their healthcare
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...What?
And also as mentioned, each hospital has a de facto monopoly in its immediate area because of laws that require patients to be transported to the nearest hospital in many life-threatening scenarios.
I sort of agree. For instance, if you weren't allowed to call yourself a "doctor" if you were unwilling to practice medicine, and you weren't allowed to call yourself a "hospital" if you staffed your practice with non-doctors, then ambulances wouldn't ever drop off people who need the kind of care you won't provide and everything's hunky dory.
I have no objection to a religious institution operating a health center on private property where all patients are strictly voluntary, and where the non-doctor practitioners are able to freely refuse to follow best medical practices. However, once that institution agrees to accept non-voluntary ambulatory patients or any type of public funding, it's obliged to follow best medical practices.
"You're a Catholic who never wants to be in a situation of needing to terminate a pregnancy? Becoming an OBGYN was probably the wrong move."
It's not circular. It's the definition of "best" -- if there's a better thing than yours out there, yours isn't the best.
I think you're addressing something other the question at hand. I don't think anyone is trying to (and very few people are qualified to) second-guess the medical knowledge of the doctor involved in this incident. Certainly I'm not. You might be right; the doctor may have legitimately believed he could have saved both lives and had an objective medical basis for thinking so. If he did then the whole lawsuit is bull, because the doctor was trying to provide the best care.
The scenario that I'm interested in -- and I agree that this may differ from what actually happened -- is where a procedure is known and agreed to be medically necessary but is still not performed because the doctor refuses on non-medical grounds.
But you're only taking into consideration the religious freedom of one party! Both parties in this scenario have religious freedom. The patient has as much right not to be harmed by the dictates of the doctor's religion as the doctor has the right to practice those dictates so long as they don't cause harm.
Suppose you're far from home, your throat's cut, you're bleeding out, and you can't speak or otherwise communicate your preference clearly. The nearest hospital, to which the ambulance is required by law to take you as an unstable, uncommunicative patient in mortal danger, refuses to provide blood transfusions on moral grounds. You will exsanguinate without one. What then?
This is my point. It is deceptive, disingenous, and frankly dangerous for a person to label himself a "doctor" if he refuses to provide medically necessary care, it is a lie for a building to be labeled a "hospital" if it's medical staff aren't actually doctors, and it is wrong for an ambulance to involuntarily transport a person to somewhere other than a hospital.
Which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind
It will go and thou wilt go, never to return.
In a case where it wouldn't prevent further harm, you're absolutely right - when it comes to one to prevent further harm it gets murky.
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You can take abortion out of it but your still dealing with a life that is about to be born. Either way you turn on this specfiic case you are ending a life. I do not think there is a right answer to this. I'm not even sure if there is a pragmatic answer.
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Yes they did, they intentionally waited until she had become septic and was in danger of dying to perform an operation they could have performed earlier. That's Catholic doctrine about sanctity of life.
I have zero respect for that. ZERO Z E R O.
If you think there's something morally wrong about forcing a person to stop torturing a person you have the most disgusting moral system I have ever encountered.
All prohibitions are enforced by force. There is never a meaningful difference. It's as silly as "negative rights" and such.
"I prohibit guns in here!"
"Are you going to take it away if I come in?"
"Yeah?"
"So you're going to use force?"
"No."
"You're either insane or very stupid."
As for moral relativism, it is nonsensical to respect the moral beliefs of people who do not respect your moral beliefs, it's really just giving up on your own beliefs. I have no problem forcing Catholics to provide medically necessary abortions against their will because I believe that their refusal is evil just as strongly as they believe the protecting the lives of the sick and dying is evil. I'm not going to offer myself up to cannibals because I respect their beliefs either.
Are you one of those guys that thinks that women should never get an abortion under any circumstances, including to save the life of the mother?
Because that's pretty pro-death to me.
(Under American law murder is unlawful killing, not what your feelings say.)
They have a monopoly on hospitals in rural areas. In a county I work in, the closest hospital is a Catholic one 45 minutes away.
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.