I'm sorry, what year is this?

So I just ran across an article on cnn.com with this title: Lawsuit: Race-based request sidelined Michigan nurse. In a nutshell, a man asked that no African-Americans be allowed to care for his baby. So Tonya Battle -- who has worked at the hospital for 25 years -- was reassigned. A note was even added to the baby's chart that no African-Americans be allowed to care for the baby, per dad's request.

Now, I do think parents have a responsibility to be sure their children receive the best care possible, and I do think parents have a right to question those caring for their children. I even think parents have the right to ask that a particular caretaker stay away, when there is a legitimate reason. Legitimate reasons when it comes to hospital staff are going to be few and far between. If you actually witness someone mistreating your child, that would be a legitimate reason. If someone is just completely inappropriate with you and so you don't want to deal with them, that would be a legitimate reason. And by inappropriate I mean someone who is actually verbally abusive or someone who sexually harasses you. I do not mean someone who is rude or who doesn't kowtow to your every whim.

If a parent doesn't want an African-American or a homosexual or a woman or little green men caring for his child, then he has the right to stand by that choice. But that's something he needs to take into account when choosing a doctor's office or a hospital. If he has difficulty finding a facility that meets his requirements, well, that's his problem. He even has the right to go into the hospital and request that no African-Americans care for his child. However, and this is where this story goes off the rails, the hospital should absolutely have told him they would not honor that request, that they did not making staffing decisions based on the racist whims of their patients.

I don't have children, I admit that. However, it seems to me that if I did have a baby, I would be interested in having the very best caring for that baby. A nurse who has been with the facility for twenty-five years is likely good at her job. If she wasn't, she would have left, been fired, or been forced out before now.

I cannot imagine caring if the doctors and nurses are black or white or brown or blue or green. I cannot imagine caring if the doctors and nurses are Christian or Jewish or Hindu. I cannot imagine caring if the doctors and nurses are total hotties or complete toads. I cannot imagine caring if the doctors and nurses prefer same-sex or opposite-sex bed partners. None of that would matter when it came to the care of my child.* All that would matter would be that my child was cared for.

The article also mentions that the hospital lawyer objected to the hospital's actions, at which point the note was removed from the baby's file and the father was told that his request would no longer be honored. Assuming this was done before the story hit the news, then bravo. Someone in that hospital has a brain.

Finally, it makes me so sad that a parent made this request in 2013 (or 2012 or 2011 or whenever this happened). Sometimes it seems we will never move beyond this kind of stupidity in this country.


*Okay, none of that matters anyway, ever, not just when discussing the care of an infant. Well there is one time when it matters. When you're hoping to invite a particular person to be your bedmate and that person prefers whichever sex you are not... well, that's a bit of a problem.