The Washington Post reports that a growing number of health care providers are refusing to provide health care if doing so conflicts with their religious or moral beliefs. And the Seattle Times reports a growing number of parents are refusing to have their children vaccinated.
It seems here that if you are in the health care profession, your license and your oath ought to overcome your personal beliefs, just as a court-appointed lawyer may be expected to defend the criminal and a minister may be expected to soothe the sinner. If health care providers want to refuse services to certain people, they should have chosen divinity school instead of medical school.
As for parents who never lived through the polio or rubella epidemics and won’t have their children vaccinated, well, we can’t revoke their license to parent but we could revoke their kids’ school, recreational, insurance or medical services. Let them be educated and treated, instead, by Puritans who believe certain of the ailing deserve condemnation instead of comfort.
