Faith-based Medicine

For decades Catholic hospitals have followed the practice of declining to perform abortions or to deliver other services they interpret as interrupting life after conception.

But lately I've been hearing about a new type of faith-based medical practice in private medical clinics: doctors, mostly obstetrician-gynecologists or family practitioners, who tailor their medical care to their faith and ethical beliefs. Many so-called "faith-based" practices are opening in rural areas where people have limited access to more conventional medicine.

These doctors offer "natural family planning," a process of counseling and education that enables a woman, by monitoring her body temperature, to time her intercourse so that pregnancy will be more or less likely. The same doctors shun modern measures like intra-uterine devices, the morning-after pill, abortions, sterilizations, and in vitro fertilizations.

But it is simply not true, as these doctors claim, that natural family planning is as effective as birth control pills or other contraceptive measures. I and many other doctors also object to their implication that using pills and devices to avoid unwanted pregnancy is equivalent to abortion.

I have no problem with faith-based practices that allow doctors and patients to avoid discussions of issues they both find objectionable. But it is not good enough for these doctors and clinics merely to state that they provide natural family planning. Rather, I believe that patients must be fully informed that the medical care offered in these private clinics does not include all medical options that their patients can legally consider.

I really believe, however, it is best for all patients to be made aware of every measure for protecting and promoting their health, not only for birth control but also for other aspects of their well-being and medical care.

I read in one article that in some clinics doctors routinely pray for their patients as a form of therapy. I can only say that, the moment a doctor starts to pray for me as a form of treatment, "I'm outta here!" I look to my doctors for good medical care, not divine intervention.

Here's an example of a different and unacceptable "faith-based" practice: pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for oral contraceptives and possibly other medications which, for religious reasons, they do not feel should be used by any patient. If any pharmacists continue to behave in this manner, I believe their licenses should be revoked.

The job of a pharmacist is to dispense medicines ordered by a patient's doctor, not to decide unilaterally which ones they believe are suitable. It sounds too much like President Bush, who signs bills passed by Congress, but then indicates which portions of the bills he will not follow or enforce.