Louisiana Democrat suggests terrible bill
Ignore the silly human hybrid crap in the first part of this article. What is really important to be discussing here is the second part of the article where a Louisiana Democrat, Bernard LeBas, is proposing a bill that would protect people from being
held criminally or civilly liable, “discriminated against, dismissed (from a job), demoted or in any way prejudiced or damaged” for refusing to participate in a health care practice that violates his or her conscience.
Basically, if this bill becomes law, a pharmacist will be able to not do his/her job if someone comes in with a legal and valid prescription for birth control. The pharmacist will be able to reject a woman who is seeking the morning after pill. A doctor would be able to refuse treatment to a woman who needed emergency surgery that might abort her pregnancy.
They say that your right to swing your fist stops right before it hits my nose. The same applies here. Your right to follow your religion stops when it impacts my rights. Your religious beliefs should not interfere with my doctor patient relationship, PERIOD. If you disagree with the sale of birth control pills, then perhaps you need to find a profession other than being a pharmacist.
If I own a small pharmacy that only staffs one pharmacist at a time and you don’t tell me that you are opposed to giving out birth control pills when I hire you, I should be the one who is protected by the law for firing you because of an omission on your application. It should not be you who gets protected for failing to do the job I hired you to do.
Let’s say an observant Jew applied for a job and the job required work to be done on Saturdays. Are you telling me that this bill would require the employer to hire that Jewish person because it would now be illegal to discriminate against him/her? Is that what we really want? That is just absurd.
People shouldn’t be discriminated against because of their religion. However, an employer should be free to fire someone who is unable or unwilling to do the job required of them, for whatever reason including religious practice. Period.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
The bill passed but it was reduced in scope. More to come when the specifics are available online.