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Originally Posted by transplant99
Yup...so what?
You are still saying you want to force people to do things against their religious belief system...which is absurd when you want to use the "rights" argument. You want to trample someone elses rights to satisfy another rights, when in reality both can be accomodated.
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Not to split hairs, but in Canada you don't have a RIGHT to religion. You have "
Freedom of conscience and religion." One is a right--the other is a liberty.
It might seem like splitting hairs, but understanding the difference reveals why a policy allowing health care providers to make decisions about the care they provide on the basis of conscience would not only be very wrong, it would be unconstitutional.
A right requires a corresponding duty in somebody else. Saying that you have a right to religion therefore amounts to saying that the government has (and may impose on others) affirmative duties with respect to your religious practice. This isn't the law; what we have is an obligation not to interfere with your religious practice, which is very different.
The problem is, of course, that doctors are employees of the public, and marriage commissioners are its agents. And to exercise their "conscience" rights therefore may engage the s. 15 "right to equality" of the people affected. And s. 15 really IS a "RIGHT" in the sense that affirmative implementational duties are implied.
It follows that you can't place the freedom of a medical practitioner to, say, not provide certain medical services that they are contractually required to perform, on equal footing with the right of all persons to equal treatment.