Death certainly is.

All fine and dandy except that the institution existed long before there was public funding, and without those hospitals in the first place your publicly funded heathcare wouldnt have done you much good cos you would have waited twice as long to be seen elsewhere. OHIP needed them more than they needed OHIP.

As I said, all kinds of medical practicioners will say "no thanks" to performing all sorts of proceedures, so to pick on abortion or whatever is just picking on it due to the faith based reasons behind the refusal. One of our children was delivered by a prominent local catholic ObGyn. The hospital isnt catholic but I will eat my shoes if she has ever performed an abortion there. And its not for medical or administrative reasons, its a personal decision. She gets paid by OHIP for what she does, not what she doesnt do.

Clearly we aint going to agree, so Im off home. Dont start any riots.

yeah, like every paedophile on the registry is a catholic

There must be some corollary to the Godwins law. If you have to raise paedophilia in a discussion about Catholicism (1 billion practitioners worldwide), then sorry, you have lost.

I think Zoe must be trying to get Ben euthanized.

I agree: the corollary is you raising abortion on this thread when Zoe stated very clearly that this was not the procedure she was refused.

I raised abortion (with the words "for example" attached) precisely BECAUSE Zoe said it was not that. It seemed like common decency to me not to speculate further, as its not really at all relevent to the situation. For the sake of the argument its safe to say abortion is an example of something you wont find going on at an "Hotel Dieu.", or do you care to argue the toss about that for the sake of it too?

No, not at all. But I don't agree with any publicly funded hospital in Ontario (or anywhere else), whether or not it is supported by or was even originally established by one religious sect or another, refusing to carry out a legal procedure on ideological grounds. I don't think that's very controversial.

Of course. The whole problem is people mixing up "faith" and real life.

The problem is I didn't get a choice in which hospital I was referred to
I presented with a medical problem
I have tests done
I need a referral to a specialist
I get one the one I'm assigned to, only to find out they are limited in what they can do for me on religious grounds

I don't particularly want to go into gruesome medical details but the procedure ain't exactly a) an unsurprising outcome given medical history
And b) I wasn't aware of any religious restrictions on it

You cant refer a patient to a hospital that then refuses to treat them

Don't you need to speak to the referring doctor as to why s/he referred to you a place that doesn't perform the procedure you require and ask him/her to refer you to one that does?

It seems you finally agree with Harper's position that taxpayers shouldn't be funding political parties

I don't really see the problem as if it's my money I should have some say where it's spent. For instance when I donate to hospitals I make the stipulation that the cash should only be spent on white people.

I never thought that of you, must be a typo

Yes, I missed off the ØŸ

In my life I found Catholic girls hotter than others. They were usually eager to initiate 'heavier' petting either because they had a notion that the sin was going to cost them and they wanted to get their penance worth or because they could do it and just confess wednesday night and continue absolved. The system worked that way when I was young and I assume still does. Sacred Heart girls giggle and call Marion girls easy.