In the news of the day, there is a sign at a walk in clinic in Calgary, Alberta which says “Please be informed that the physician of the day will not prescribe the birth control pill.” She was the only doctor on call. Her personal beliefs (of the religious variety) prevented her from allowing a grown woman any dominion over her reproductive rights.
What year is this? 1892?
As if abortion arguments aren’t enough, medical practitioners keep toeing the grey line of professional ethics by denying birth control pills and the Plan B emergency contraceptive. They do this based on their “personal” religious beliefs. What a dangerous precedent, to allow religious quackery into the professional health care of the general public.
Every life is sacred! Or so sayeth the Catholic church, who has long been an adversary to contraception in any form. It doesn’t matter that having a litter of children might sink you into poverty. It doesn’t matter that, as a female, our rights to our own bodies are being ceded to others. It doesn’t matter if you were raped and find yourself pregnant against your will; someone believes that God intends you to follow through.
Perhaps God thought you brought rape on yourself by dressing like a slut, no doubt. And those pregnancies that could kill you to deliver full term? Well, good luck with that. God works in mysterious ways.
Allowing your faith in my medicine means that, in this age of enlightenment, we are still somehow allowing others to take our medical care and lifestyle rights away from us. Where does such a slippery slope end? Will a Jehovah’s Witness be allowed to refuse to provide you an emergency blood transfusion and end your life because of Acts 15:29? Will a Jewish medical professional be allowed to circumcise your child without your authorization? Will you be denied prescription medication that improves your quality of life because, gosh darn it, that pharmacist just doesn’t feel like dispensing it to you? What if, in a bizzare twist of fate, an atheist decides your religion is bullshit and decides that you should be put on mandatory birth control? You know, to prevent you from breeding?
There’s a good reason why church and state should stay separate.
At what point do the rights of others who don’t subscribe to your particular brand of religious dogmatism begin to be respected? My money is being used to pay for public servants who aren’t serving the public when there aren’t enough of these so-called medical “professionals” to go around as it is. What if my personal religious beliefs mean I don’t believe in being forced to pay for your beliefs?
My belief is that I have every much right to freedom of religion as you do, I have the right to control my own body and my family planning, and I have the right to the best standards of health care available. If your belief is contrary to the general standards of medical science and my choices, my belief is that you should find an alternative place to practice your medicine… perhaps in voodoo, where the only victims of your beliefs will be chickens and the occasional goat.
Godspeed to you. Right off a cliff.
Photo by Joan Chand’oiseau