(July 1, 2014 at 6:17 pm)Beccs Wrote:(July 1, 2014 at 6:08 pm)blackout94 Wrote: C'mon you are comparing two different situations. Performing a surgery means saving a life, nothing else is at stake. Performing an abortion for some people means murdering or taking/terminating a life. You might not like it or disagree but people have the right to be against the ethics of abortion, if a doctor doesn't want to perform it, why force them? Just like I can refuse to go to war because my ethics are against it, I can refuse to marry 2 gays if my religion is against it, I can refuse to provide military service if my ethics is against it, the list goes on. In a democratic state ruled by the law according to fundamental rights people have the right to not get their principles hurt trough coercion.
But where do we end objections.
We had an ethics debate when I was in med school regarding a case in London where UK Muslim medical students who were women refusing to wear short sleeves because it was against their religion. Long sleeves can get dipped into injuries and carry contamination.
THe general consensus was that if their religious views were put before the needs of their patients then they should find something else to do and stay out of medicine.
Yes, I'm being pedantic though technically, refusing to perform life saving surgery on a hardened criminal could well save the lives of others.
So the question remains: where do we stop allowing objections to overcome the needs of the patient?
You made a very good question. Of course objections are not infinite. Let's take the case of abortion or even gay marriage - Doctor refuses to give an abortion, is he endangering the life of the woman? In most cases no, unless her life is at stake, he is just refusing personally to give an abortion, she won't die from it and she can ask another doctor who is comfortable with it, that way everybody is happy. The same applies for gay marriage, a guy refuses to marry two gays, the couple asks another official to do it and he accepts, there will always be people that accept to marry them so everybody gets happy. In the surgery case you refuse and the patient dies if there is no other doctor to perform it. If you refuse abortion the woman most times won't die, even if she was forced to have a baby she most likely wouldn't die from it unless she made an illegal clandestine abortion, but if this happened it wouldn't the doctor who refused's fault.
Objections, put it simply, end when more important rights are at stake. Let's imagine a Jehovah's witness parent refusing a minor a blood transfusion - In this cased it should not be allowed. But in the case of abortion, there is no reason to not allow it since it's still a controversial issue. The case you quoted of Muslim women should not be allowed if they endanger the patient's life, and the case of the murderer depends on the jail time and if he can be rehabilitated or not.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you