The end of physician conscience protection in America?

The period of public comment on conscience protection for health care providers will end on April 9. No one wants the government telling physicians they must violate their conscience in the practice of medicine. This is especially important regarding life and death decisions.

This basic principle securing the integrity of physician-patient relationships has been threatened of late. In December 2008 the Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation clarifying the protections offered by three civil rights laws for health care providers passed by Congress with bipartisan support. However, the Obama administration has stated its intention of overturning the conscience regulation and not enforcing the existing laws.

If conscience protection for physicians is extinguished, you will be at the mercy of your health plan or government. The Hippocratic Oath ensures that the physician will act in the best interest of the patient. However, in other utilitarian or communitarian ethical systems, that is not the case.

In the 1930's the medical societies in Germany were Nazified, purging the leadership and ranks of the physicians who did not want to go along with the Nazi program. Cardinal George recently warned that eliminating conscience protections "would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism."

People need to use their heads here.

If one is pro-choice, would you honestly want a doctor who is performing an operation against their conscience, operating on YOU?

The pro-choicers are missing the boat, here. They should be screaming “NO” the loudest.

For example, if you were a couple of lesbians hoping to start a family via in-vitro (or some other procedure) would you choose a doctor who is diametricaly opposed to such an arrangement to perform such? This seems a little bit insane to me. I’d want a doctor who shared my interest in a successful outcome, not one who (in their heart) hopes for a failure.

Alas, this is again the classic liberal vs. conservative argument. Liberals operate in a static environment and conservatives operate in a dynamic environment.

It’s the ol’ “broken clock being right twice a day” thing. LOL

But seriously, isn’t the most remarkable thing of this Obama era, this: Trying to convince people not to toss their common sense out the window?

Don’t know if it’s a product of the schools, or a number of years of “soft” living, without a lot of worries.... but it’s scary to me how many people have abandoned all notion of common sense. It’s astonishing to me. I’m a high school grad, of course. Limited college. Nearly completed CFP classes until family came along. MG cert from OSU. My b/f holds a Master’s degree. His immediate family has degrees from: Oxford, Harvard, Stanford. All brilliant, but no sense. I ask him “When you tell your sisters that Obama favors nations that support Sharia, which is anti-child, anti-woman, anti-gay, what do they say?” he says they have no answer for him. Of course not. Who has an answer for it, after all?

Common sense is deserving of some “props” these days. It’s in very short supply, I’m afraid.

Had already written to my congressman, Baron Hill, Indiana 9th CongDist, and his answer appears below. What do you make of it?

April 3, 2009

Dear [”John Leland”],

Thank you for contacting me about the conscience clause. I appreciate hearing your thoughts on this matter.

Conscience clause laws allow medical providers to refuse to provide services to which they have religious or moral objections. These laws are generally designed to reconcile the conflict between health care providers who provide services in accordance with their religious beliefs and patients who want access to the medical care that these religious providers find objectionable.

In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade, Congress quickly passed the Church Amendment as part of the Health Programs Extension Act of 1973. This was the first conscience clause enacted into law, and remains in law today. The Church Amendment states that public officials may not require individuals or entities who receive certain public funds to perform abortion or sterilization procedures, or to make facilities or personnel available for the performance of such procedures if such performance “would be contrary to [the individual or entity’s] religious beliefs or moral convictions.” The law applies to any individual or entity that receives funds under the Public Health Service Act (PHSA), the Community Mental Health Centers Act, or the Developmental Disabilities Services and Facilities Construction Act. Additionally, the law prohibits entities that receive federal funds under these statutes or certain programs administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from engaging in employment discrimination against doctors or other medical personnel who either perform abortion or sterilization procedures or who refuse to perform such procedures on moral or religious grounds.

Conscience clause provisions have also been included in the FY2005, FY2006, and FY2008 appropriations measures for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS) and Education. The conscience clause language in the appropriations bills prevent the federal government and state and local governments from enacting policies that require health care entities to provide or pay for certain abortion-related services. These recent appropriations provisions are temporary in nature.

Ultimately, I oppose government funding of abortion. However, I also believe in responsible family planning and would support the U.S. government helping to prevent any unwanted pregnancies in order to decrease the number of abortions. It is important to note that, by law, federal funds may not be used by programs that utilize abortion as a method of family planning. I believe that with this safeguard in place, family planning services can effectively provide services to women, and that is why I support them.

Thank you again for contacting me about this important issue. Please feel free to call me at 202.225.5315 if you have any further questions or comments. If you would like to receive periodic email updates on my Congressional activities, please visit http://baronhill.house.gov.

The Obama administration, in striking down HHS conscience regulations, claims that doctors should either be required to perform abortions and other objectionable acts, or refer patients to someone who is willing to do so.

This "referral" requirement disregards the reason why doctors find abortion morally abhorrent to begin with.

An analogy. There’s a mental condition, Amputee Identity Disorder, in which a person thinks that he/she would be happier as an amputee, and requests that a doctor amputate healthy limbs in order to enact that desire.

An ethical surgeon will not only refuse to amputate a healthy limb, but also refuse to refer this individual to a surgeon known to be unethical, who would amputate healthy arms, legs, or anything else if the price is right.

It is far more repugnant to destroy a healthy baby than to destroy a healthy limb. If abortion is murder, then to make a referral to a known baby-killer is to become an accomplice to murder.

Most abortion-seekers find abortionists by looking in the Yellow Pages under “A”. The Obama administration intends, not to guarantee abortion access, but to make it hard for moral, pro-life doctors to remain in medical practice at all.

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