Remember the two pharmacists in Texas who were fired because they couldn’t, in good conscience, prescribe abortifacient “morning-after” pills to a rape victim? Now there’s a Catholic doctor in the Navy is in trouble because he won’t prescribe contraceptives or refer his patients to another doctor for them.
Complicating the matter for them is that the doctor’s wife has cancer and being forcibly separated from the Navy or forced to transfer could jeopardize her health. So, for the moment, Dr. Thomas Messe will refer his patients who want contraceptives to another doctor who will prescribe them.
Current Navy regulations say that any medical personnel who object to “family-planning” services are not required to perform or assist in them, but they must refer the patient to someone else. But Bishop Michael Cote of Norwich, CT, in whose diocese Messe lives, says the regulations are illogical: .”
