Doctors and religious beliefs: Expect a timid response from the courts

[rug]

DAVID BUTT
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Jul. 10 2014, 11:46 AM EDT
Last updated Thursday, Jul. 10 2014, 11:47 AM EDT

We lawyers are much like hoarders – but in a non-pathological sense, I hope. We relentlessly collect other peoples’ life experiences, call them “precedents”, categorize them, and file them away for dim future purposes. Most of the precedents we obsessively collect are useless. Ever wonder what’s in those long, dusty rows of drab books in the background of TV legal dramas? Precedents, arduously assembled, almost never read.

But every so often, precedents are a godsend that help solve thorny dilemmas with consistency and wisdom. And so it is with the tricky question of whether a doctor can withhold medical treatment based on religious beliefs. Earlier cases from our highest courts shed light on how the courts would resolve this dilemma.

Here is what a court would do.

First the court would ask, is the doctor’s religious belief sincerely held? If not, the patient must receive treatment, without regard to the so-called religious objection. But if the religious belief is sincerely held, the court will not question the wisdom or even the rationality of that belief. Freedom of religion in Canada is very strong: an increasingly important protection as secularists develop a superiority complex. We have the right to religious beliefs most others think nutty as long as those beliefs do not cause anyone serious harm.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/doctors-and-religious-beliefs-expect-a-timid-response-from-the-courts/article19547024/

[Humanist_Activist]

1. If a doctor can't do the job, then they should be fired, period...

Health care is a much higher priority than, for example, loans, but I don't see anyone out there arguing that loan officers at banks have the right to refuse to give people loans with interest because of their religious beliefs forbid it. If they were to attempt to do so, or give out interest-free loans, they would rightfully be penalized for it, so should the doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or pharmacy tech who refuse to do part of their jobs.

[pinto]

2. The author seems to take the exact approach he predicts the courts will.

I assume he supports it. Don't know enough about the Canadian legal system, precedents, laws, constitution, etc. to have much more of an opinion.