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French panel recommends measures to keep religion out of hospitals
PARIS: A report issued Monday by a government-appointed panel recommended that France adopt a charter to keep religious traditions and beliefs out of its hospitals and other institutions.
Far softer than a 2004 law that banned Muslim head scarves and other “ostentatious” religious signs from public classrooms, the proposed charter is, like the head scarf law, an effort to ensure the secular nature of France.
Tensions over religious beliefs in French hospitals, prisons and elsewhere have mounted in recent years, particularly as Muslim fundamentalists find a voice. With an estimated 5 million Muslims, Islam is the second religion in France.
Plans to draw the line on what is considered unacceptable behavior in hospitals, carrying risks for patients, were first raised three years ago during the debate over Muslim head scarves. Jean- Pierre Raffarin, who was prime minister at the time, said that hospitals were the next target.
In May, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin asked the High Council on Integration to prepare recommendations to ensure secularism in public institutions. It submitted its proposal for a charter on Monday.
Male doctors, particularly in maternity wards, say they are increasingly subject to insults, even blows, most often by men opposed to nudity or physical contact with their wives and daughters.
The conviction last week of Fouhad Ben Moussa highlighted the issue. He pulled Jean-Franc,ois Oury, head of the maternity ward of Robert Debre’ Hospital in Paris, from a hospital room in September and slapped him after the doctor examined his wife, who had hemorrhaged after giving birth, according to court testimony.
“In my religion, a man doesn’t touch a woman,” Ben Moussa screamed, according to the testimony. In court, Ben Moussa, expressing regret, said his real motivation had been modesty, not religion. He was sentenced to a six-month jail term that can be partly served at home.
“I think the Oury case was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Emile Darai”, secretary general of the National Congress of French Gynecologists and Obstetricians.
The group, unusually, issued a statement in October asking, “Do gynecologists and obstetricians now need police protection to practice?”
The statement affirmed that male and female doctors would treat patients “whatever their sex,” and said it was the woman who had freedom “to determine contraception, abortion, sterilization without the opinion of her husband.”
The experts recommending a charter for public institutions measured their words, affirming the rights of patients, but stressing the need for a “balanced approach.”
The report said there was no need to legislate on the issue, but stressed that respect for the functioning of the hospital was vital. It suggested a charter laying out the constitutionally guaranteed principle of secularism be adopted and that pertinent sections be posted at the relevant institutions.
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