The relevant colleges – surgeon, physician, GP, obstetrics, etc. – overwhelmingly run the ethical, practice, treatment requirements, protocols, and guidelines that doctors are subject to; not the legislature. If YOU want Wilson Tuckey and Tony Abbott in charge of dictating how doctors should think, YOU are free to get the very next cab to the airport.

Every single doctor in this country would have objections to deny certain treatments, procedures, for any of one or more of a million reasons – ethical, moral, aesthetic, ill-informed, dictatorial, right-before-his/her-time. For example, there are now many medical practices that will not prescribe benzodiazepines (Valium, Xanax, etc), despite these medicines being totally legal and a tremendously significant and globally-acknowledged source of palliative care for a great many maladies. Similarly, the psychiatric colleges are split on ECT. Many see modern ECT treatments as a godsend for certain mood disorders, while others see ECT as evil as the most rabid anti-abortionist sees abortion, and thus will not perform them.

Just as it should not be the university’s job to fix up atrocious schooling by admitting imbeciles, I see no reason why an anti-abortion GP should be obliged to do anything more than say “m’am, you have come to the wrong place, I am not an abortionist, and just as you do not require a GP’s referral for Botox, or admission to the ER, you do not need one for an abortion. Good day to you”.

Oh yeah. I await answers from those who woul kill the prisoner and keep their job.

I know a Christian woman who firmly believes that God put different coloured people on the earth in different places specifically because He intended them to live apart. She is physically and morally repulsed by the sight of anyone who isn’t of the exact ethnicity as her, believing that they shouldn’t be in her corner of the world. To her this is a core spiritual belief; part of being a good God-fearing Christian. To us it is ridiculous and a misrepresentation of Biblical text, but there you go. But what if she were a doctor?

Would it be okay for her to pick and choose her patients and be driven by her own conscience and belief system?

Is it okay for a Jewish doctor to use his “conscience” to refuse to treat a woman wearing a hijab?

Or an Indian doctor refusing to deal with Pakistani patients?

Legislating in such a way as to give people leeway for their conscience will aways lead to problems because there will aways be those who feel the need to deny the human rights of others, especially when they themselves are in a position of power and/or privilege.

A quick look at the history of any civil rights movement will give you ample proof of that.

Seriously.

No Sam, you are adopting the view that if the state gives an order it must be obeyed.

Um, yes. It’s called “the law”.