Ah, now being over here I was not aware of this change in a doctor's referral obligations in America; see over here, it's still the case that if a doctor refuses they are obliged to refer their patient.

But telling someone who wants to go out there to learn how to save people's lives, an admirable choice of profession I think we can all agree, that they shouldn't be a doctor in the first place just comes back to the whole idea of infringing on their freedom of choice, surely?
I agree that we can tell them they shouldn't be, but we can't nor should we actually enforce that. Also, isn't refusing treatment of a patient due to the doctor's point of view a form of conscientious objection? Another freedom we should be allowed to exercise?
And coming off of that last point, whilst I agree that it's very harsh to the patient that the doctor is no longer obliged to refer the patient to another doctor, doesn't forcing them to refer the patient to another doctor who will treat them negate the whole idea of allowing them to protest in the first place?

Isn't politics such a minefield? I love it sometimes.