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Wednesday, December 7, 2005 12:00 AM

Religious conservatives: All women should be pregnant! Oh, except you

Calif. fertility doctors refuse to inseminate an unmarried lesbian.

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  • Thursday, December 8, 2005 10:54 AM

    Slippery slope

    This flame war with Jessica is fascinating, but let's get back to the issue.

    Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is bad enough, but the idea that it was legal to deny medical help on marital status shows this isn't an issue where gays and lesbians will be the only ones personally affected.

    What we need here is a constitutional right to procreate, much the way the Supreme Court created a right to marry (not yet extended to gays) explicitly in 1969 when it struck down a ban on interracial marriage in Loving vs. Virginia.

    There have been a whole host of other reasons that have been proposed to prohibit people from marrying--all of which could equally be given as reasons why doctors (or the state) might object on moral or personal grounds to providing medical help: An attempt by Wisconsin to prohibit people from marrying when one person owes child support; an attempt to prevent prisoners or ex-cons from marrying, if someone has a history as an alcoholic or drug addict, has been through a bankruptcy, if someone has been accused of child abuse or neglect. If someone has a history of adultery or was determined by the doctor or the state to be too poor--all could be given as reasons to refuse medical help to have a child.

    Maybe Jessica wouldn't choose to prevent people from having kids for any of these reasons, but plenty of others (from all ends of the political spectrum) probably would.

    I doubt the current Supreme Court will write opinions to extend Constitutional rights to the act of procreation. Lacking that, the goal should be achieved through democratic means, with legislation that goes deeply into the professions of doctors and pharmacists, forcing them to risk their licenses and certification if they refuse help to patients.

    If doctors and pharmacists don't want the state micromanaging their professions more than they already do, then they should prevail upon members of their profession to keep their personal views to themselves. Suck it up and do your job.

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