By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist

The doctors at North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group in California had no problem treating Guadalupe T. Benitez for a medical condition that prevented her from becoming pregnant.

But they balked when it came time to perform the artificial insemination procedure that might enable her to actually conceive.

Benitez said two of the doctors said they wouldn’t help her because she was a lesbian. The physicians denied that; they said their religious beliefs stopped them from helping any unmarried woman conceive a child.

If a lawsuit filed by Benitez proceeds, a jury may eventually sort out the conflicting stories. But the California Supreme Court lent some clarity to the issue this week by ruling that doctors can’t deny medical treatment because of a person’s sexual orientation.

“The First Amendment’s right to free exercise of religion does not exempt … physicians from conforming their conduct to (a California law’s) antidiscrimination requirements,” the ruling states.

Good for the judges. I will cheer any ruling that spares people from being denied medical treatment because someone in the profession disapproves of who or what they are.

Ethics and medicine are tightly braided, and that’s especially true of reproductive medicine.

Legislators in Missouri, for instance, have considered a law enabling pharmacists to cite religious beliefs as a justification to refuse to dispense some forms of contraception. That would create an access problem, especially in rural areas, and I hope the legislature never takes such a step.

But the pharmacists want to opt out of a particular treatment that they find objectionable. The situation with Benitez is a lot more personal. The physicians at North Coast Women’s Care Medical Group wanted to deny her treatment because they objected to a core part of her identity.

Not surprisingly, the California court’s ruling is being castigated as another power play by judges intent on overturning the will of the people.

“The decision runs roughshod over the First Amendment’s free-exercise clause, seeking to supplant Judeo-Christian principles with the state-imposed religion of secularism,” legal-affairs editor Andrew C. McCarthy wrote in The National Review.

But it was elected California legislators who passed a law saying businesses can’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. And the court ruling cites several U.S. Supreme Court decisions which basically say that if a state has a legitimate reason to pass a law, citizens can’t opt out on religious grounds.

The guiding principles of the doctors’ own profession suggest they were wrong to deny Benitez care.

“Professional ethics requires that health be delivered in a way that is respectful of patient autonomy, timely and effective, evidence based and nondiscriminatory,” the American College and Obstetricians and Gynecologists noted in a report that explored “conscientious refusal” by doctors.

“By virtue of entering the profession of medicine, physicians accept a set of moral values — and duties — that are central to medical practice,” the report said.

The doctors who refused to treat Benitez contend they met their professional obligations by referring her to another practice.

Their actions cost her money, however, because the new doctor was outside of her health insurance plan.

Eventually Benitez and her long-time partner became parents.

The discrimination they encountered is part of the same strain of bigotry that has prevented gay and lesbian people from adopting children and becoming foster parents.

But same-sex couples and gay individuals are finding ways to become parents. In the process, they’re tearing down the mistaken notion that children are somehow harmed by growing up with loving adults who happen not to be heterosexual.