It was bad enough when pharmacists who call themselves pro-life refused to fill prescriptions for morning-after pills and an emergency medical technician refused to help drive a woman to an abortion clinic. Now a new survey has revealed that a disturbing number of doctors, at the presumed pinnacle of the health professions, feel no responsibility to inform patients of treatments that they deem immoral or to refer them to other doctors for care. Although the close-mouthed doctors claim a right to follow their consciences, they are grievously failing their patients and seem to have forgotten the age-old admonition to “do no harm.”
The survey, by researchers at the University of Chicago, was published last week in The New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers mailed questionnaires to some 2,000 doctors asking whether they had religious or moral objections to three controversial practices. Of the 1,144 who responded, only 17 percent objected to “terminal sedation” to render dying patients unconscious, but 42 percent objected to prescribing birth control for adolescents without parental approval, and 52 percent opposed abortion for failed contraception.
Posted on February 16, 2007 by Site Staff
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