There was recently a story in the news where a walk-in clinic doctor wouldn't prescribe birth control because he had moral objections to it.
All this coverage would have benefited from an interview with the doctor in question, or others like him, shedding light on their internal reasoning for choosing this medical specialty.
As we've discussed before, approximately one third of all Canadians use prescription contraception. That means that any given doctor working in family practice or a clinic can expect one third of all their patients to come in at least once a year asking for contraception.
If you're morally opposed to providing contraception, why would you pursue a line of work where one third of your clientele is going to ask for something you're morally opposed to?
There are many fields of medicine where contraception is not going to come up at all. Gerontology, podiatry, oncology, pediatrics, palliative care, otolaryngology, gastroenterology, cardiology, pulmonology, hematology, and I'm sure many other kinds of medicine whose existence I've never thought about. Contraception is only going to come up in general practice, walk-in clinics, and gynecology/urology, with occasional appearances in emergency medicine, dermatology, and possibly endocrinology.
Why doesn't this doctor and other like him choose one of the many other fields of medicine, or work in a children's hospital or a long-term care home or somewhere similar where they simply won't be called upon to provide contraception?
I also wonder if medical schools and colleges of physicians and whatever other organizations might be involved take any measures to discourage future doctors from studying to practise in fields in which they're morally opposed to very common and medically-accepted treatments.
2 comments:
Excellent question.
Conspiracy theory says they purposely choose these fields so they can spread their version of morality.
I also wonder why doctors are not bound by universal ethics that demand, if they go into a certain field, they practice all available medicine in that field.
Socially conservative health professionals are such primadonnas they make me sick. Very few people get to play a "conscientious objector" card in the workplace. I'll admit I've turned down temp agency gigs because the client was a defense contractor, but if that caused me not to get subsequent calls on non-defense business (something which I have no way to verify, of course) then I would have absolutely no recourse against that. I accept that as an unfortunate part of the way the world works. All of the health care professions, of course, have artificial entry barriers and are in effect "rent extracting," which is a little ironic since there's more than a little overlap (at least in the USA) between Bible-based politics and market-based or "small government" politics.
I have no sympathy for people who want no compromises in either their career pursuits or their moral convictions.
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