Tuesday 19 August 2008

Doctors Must Treat All Regardless of Beliefs says US Calif. Court

A Californian court has ruled that doctors must provide treatment to all regardless of their personal beliefs. The case was brought by a lesbian women who was refused fertility treatment because of the religious beliefs of the clinics doctors.

Justice Joyce Kennard said that the two Christian doctors could not refuse treatment on grounds of free speech and had no religious exemption. The plaintiff, Guadalupe Benitez, 36, said that the two doctors treated her with fertility drugs and told her how to inseminate herself at home but said that their beliefs prevented them from inseminating her themselves. One of the doctors refered her to another fertility doctors who had no objections to treating her.

Benitez and her lawyers used a law originally intended to prevent hoteliers and restaurateurs that had since been extended to include sexual orientation.

Robert Tyler, a lawyer for the clinic accused the court of furthering the supreme court's "radical agenda"

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