Indentured servants?

Do doctors give up their rights once they become licensed by the state? That's what California's highest court will decide later this year in a San Diego case involving a lesbian who wanted to have a baby.

Guadalupe Benitez says she was treated with fertility drugs for more than a year in hopes of eventually becoming pregnant through artificial insemination. But when the time came for the procedure, she claims her two Christian doctors refused to go along because of her sexual orientation.

Ms. Benitez, who now has a 6-year-old boy and 2-year-old twin girls, did what any modern-day American would do: She sued.

A trial judge sided with Ms. Benitez, but she later lost her appeal.

The case, which was heard Wednesday by the California Supreme Court, likely hinges on a technicality. The appeals court noted that at the time Ms. Benitez sought treatment, California law allowed businesses to restrict their clientele based on marital status -- and the doctors had argued that this was their main reason for not moving forward with the treatment.

The larger issue, however, is whether a medical doctor is compelled to provide treatment -- especially treatment involving an obviously elective procedure. Indeed, an attorney for the doctors admitted that the woman might have a reasonable case if his clients had refused to carry out a life-saving measure.

On the other side, Jennifer Pizer, an attorney for the gay rights group that represents Ms. Benitez, told The Associated Press that, "There is confusion among many health care providers who believe doctors have the freedom to pick and choose their patients. But doctors' ethics may not be exercised in a discriminatory way."

In fact, though, it's Ms. Pizer who is confused. Yes, her client has a right to seek out a medical doctor who will artificially inseminate her. But in a free society, any doctor must also have the right to refuse her request. A legitimate "right" can't and doesn't impose an obligation or legal duty upon others. To argue the contrary is to reject liberty in favor of totalitarianism.

Ms. Benitez should have simply found another doctor who would accede to her wishes. The two practitioners in question even recommended somebody else to her.

Ethicists can debate whether the two doctors did the right thing by their profession or the Hippocratic Oath. But if the California high court embraces the arguments of Ms. Pizer, the justices are ruling that medical doctors are nothing more than indentured servants on call for the state.