Look.  If your religion prevents you from doing your job, then either (a) get another job or (b) get another religion.  Here’s what I’m talking about — a story from Lancaster, PA:

A Good Samaritan Hospital emergency room doctor refused to give a rape victim a morning-after pill because he said it was against his Mennonite religion.

Rebuffed by the doctor, the woman called her gynecologist, who wrote the prescription. Her local pharmacy told her it was out of the drug and referred her to a sister store in Reading.

The former medical director of the hospital said he sees nothing strange about asking a woman from eastern Lebanon County to drive to Reading for a drug.

"People drive to Reading to buy jeans. Even if that were the case, that you had to drive to Reading to get this [prescription], to me that does not rise to a compulsion that you have to pass laws that [doctors] have to do something," Dr. Joe Kearns said.

Well, he might have a point about passing laws, but that doesn’t remove the moral obligation of caregivers to, you know, give care.

Emergency contraception, often called the morning-after pill, gives a high dosage of birth-control medicine that can prevent pregnancy.

It’s a pill that Dr. Martin Gish, the physician who treated the rape victim, said he has prescribed.

"This is an issue I’ve struggled with for years," Gish said. "My current feeling is life begins at conception, and I feel that anything that interferes with that" causes an abortion.

"The dilemma I have is the whole rape issue: Which side are you more concerned with? Are you more concerned about the mother or the life that was possibly created? That’s my dilemma," he said. "I personally don’t have this thing worked out. I’m not sure how my faith can line up with my practice at times of what I’m asked to do."

And while I think the doctor here is sincere about having a "dilemna", he has to understand that ultimately it’s not about him and his issues.  Not when he puts on the stethoscope.  He needs to recognize who his patient is, and treat that patient.  And if he can’t, he needs to find work elsewhere.  The woman was raped for chrissakes.  Why should she have to jump through hoops to get the care she needs?