Last month, I posted an excerpt from an opinion piece by Noah Feldman about the docs vs. glocks controversy in Florida and how the issue should be framed as one of privacy between doctors and patients, not as a protected speech issue.
Nelson Lund had a response to Feldman that I just saw today. Here’s an excerpt:
Although the Florida statute allows physicians to ask about firearms if the information is “relevant to the patient’s medical care or safety, or the safety of others,” Feldman objects that one school of thought holds that gun ownership is itself a public health problem and that physicians are practicing medicine when they try to combat this supposed epidemic. Voilà! The real problem with the Florida statute is that it intrudes on the practice of medicine, which is at the heart of Roe v. Wade’s constitutional right to privacy.
Let’s leave aside the gigantic leap, never even suggested by the Supreme Court, from a right to abortion to a right to be interrogated by your doctor about guns you may own. Assuming, with Feldman, that Roe v. Wade should be the starting point, how does the right of privacy in that case apply to the muzzle that California puts on mental health therapists?
If Roe’s right to privacy protects pregnant girls and women who want an invasive medical procedure, it follows a fortiorithat willing patients must have a right to talk in private with willing therapists about what both regard as a medical issue.
Read more on Federalist Society.
via CNS News