Doctors are under no ethical obligation to provide any services that their faith prohibits. They do have an ethical and professional obligation to be honest about their religious beliefs and not deceive their patients with a phony cloaking of faith in scientific language. Physicians who warn women about so-called "post-abortion trauma syndrome" -- the existence of which is supported by no scientific evidence -- are simply faith-based liars, trying to scare women into submitting to "Doctor's" religious imperatives. Doctor says. Doctor's God says.

A doctor whose faith prohibits abortion should say straightforwardly to a woman who wants to terminate her pregnancy, "I can't do this because my religion won't let me, but I can refer you to a clinic that does provide such services, including counseling."

It is unconscionable -- and there are many documented cases of this in Roman Catholic hospitals and in hospitals in communities where the influence of the Protestant Christian right is strong -- for doctors to deprive patients of information they need to make an informed choice. Not telling a rape victim about the availability of the morning-after pill is another example of this type of ethical and medical malpractice.

The Bush administration has encouraged this kind of misleading, faith-based medicine. Bush's choice as the chief of family planning programs for the Department of Health and Human Services last fall was Dr. Erick Keroack, medical director of a faith-based nonprofit group of clinics called "A Woman's Concern" in Massachusetts. Dr. Keroack's "concern" was that women be deprived of contraceptives and contraceptive information.

In his view, anyone who has premarital sex is less likely to form a healthy relationship later in life because every orgasm somehow reduces a person's capacity for deep emotional attachment. Dr. Keroack's view of orgasm was approximately that of Gen. Jack D. Ripper in the movie Dr. Strangelove. Gen. Ripper, as you may recall, was concerned about the Russians stealing his "precious bodily fluids."

Fortunately, this quack had to resign his federal post, since his clinics were under investigation in Massachusetts for financial improprieties.

Physicians should never be obligated to perform procedures or provide services that violate their personal moral code. In Oregon, for example--the only state where physician-assisted dying is legal--no doctor is required to prescribe drugs for a terminally ill patient who wishes to commit suicide. But doctors should always be morally obligated to refer patients to another physician whose moral code puts the patient's choice first.

I can hear the paternalistic objection right now: "But abortion is murder. Suicide is a mortal sin. How can I, as a doctor of faith, refer a patient to another doctor who doesn't agree with me?" The answer is that in a democratic society, a doctor doesn't get to define either sin or crime for a patient. The law and the patient's own beliefs do that. Doctors who presume to dictate the moral choices of their patients should have gone to the seminary instead of medical school.

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