Posted on 07/24/2014 6:51:00 PM PDT by markomalley
The wailing and gnashing of teeth in some quarters over the modest Hobby Lobby decision has me worried. Apparently, many on the political port side of the country believe that once a favored public policy has been enacted, it immediately becomes a “right” that can never be altered or denied. More, once such a “right” is established for the individual, others should have the duty to ensure access—even at the cost of violating their own religious consciences.
If such thinking prevails, medical professionals could be forced to participate in the taking of human life, for example in abortion, assisted suicide, and (given the research trends in regenerative medicine) providing treatments derived from the intentional destruction of human embryos or fetuses.
That certainly seems to be the direction in which the ACLU wishes to take the country. Recently, the ACLU of Washington State began trolling for potential clients to sue medical professionals or facilities that refused to participate in certain legal procedures or transactions based on religious objection:
Have you or members of your family been denied reproductive health care or end-of-life services by a religiously based medical facility? The ACLU believes that everyone in Washington has the right to receive health care that is not restricted by the religious beliefs of others.
The solicitation listed specific procedures—some of which involve the taking of human life—that presumably a patient should have a right to receive. They include:
Some might think that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the law that protected Hobby Lobby, could also protect medical professionals and facilities. Nope. That law only applies to cases involving federal statutes. Unless a state has its own equivalent law, RFRA protections do not apply. (In Washington doctors cannot currently be forced to participate in assisted suicide, but pharmacists do not enjoy equivalent conscience rights.)
But what about the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of religion? Religious health professionals and religiously-operated health facilities may be out of luck on that score, too. Indeed, the RFRA was passed by a near unanimous Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton to overcome a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that deprived individuals of religious protection against a law of “general applicability,” e.g., one not aimed at chilling religious practice but which merely has that ancillary impact.
But couldn’t Congress pass a law offering RFRA-like religious protection against state laws? Sure, but the consensus between the religious left and right that culminated in the federal law has completely collapsed over issues such as gay rights. Indeed, today it is unlikely that the federal RFRA—passed a mere twenty years ago—would have a prayer of being enacted.
It is tempting but folly to think that medical providers’ consciences won’t be enlisted in this way. Quebec just legalized euthanasia and requires every doctor to either euthanize legally qualified patients or cooperate in finding a doctor willing to provide a lethal injection. Victoria, Australia has a similar law requiring all doctors’ participation or complicity in abortion.
Moreover, the American medical establishment already opposes conscience exemptions for abortion and the dispensing of contraception. For example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) published an ethics-committee opinion denying its members the right of conscience against abortion:
The first important consideration in defining limits for conscientious refusal is the degree to which a refusal constitutes an imposition on patients who do not share the objector’s beliefs. One of the guiding principles in the practice of medicine is respect for patient autonomy, a principle that holds that persons should be free to choose and act without controlling constraints imposed by others. . . . Respect for autonomy has particular importance in reproductive decision making, which involves private, personal, often pivotal decisions about sexuality and childbearing.
Such denial of medical conscience is not yet embedded in American law. But if the anti-religious liberties lobby gets its way, it will be. Indeed, in coming years, medical professionals who believe in the Hippocratic Oath’s prohibition against killing could well be driven out of medicine.
Doctors were forced to kill in nazi Germany.
most will quit. they know they have to live in their own skin. they don’t want to be truly hated and reviled like politicians and journalists and lawyers.
No one can “force” you to do anything.
They could, however, strip you of your license, or, in extreme cases, imprison (or even execute) you.
But this, taken in conjunction with all the ObamaCare, socialized medicine nonsense, will make it less likely for talented people to go into medicine and more difficult to get quality health care.
Socialism on the march.
The medical profession fought many legal battles over the subject of physician participation in lethal injection executions. IIRC, they won every time.
The precedent was set, that no physician would participate in the placing of IV lines, or in the process of administering lethal chemicals to the condemned.
Physicians have been on hand at executions for many years, to make a pronouncement of death and to state the time of death.
BUMP!
And Osama Obama was *oh* so wrong!
Yes, they will. All of these things go from somebody’s “right” to do some liberally approved thing (gay marriage, assisted suicide, etc.) to everybody’s obligation to do it.
Bammy’s Death Panels will insist.
No, that’s what nurses are for.
The AMA can cry me a river. So can the GOPe. So can the RNC. And so can anyone who gives in to the moral equivalency of Birth Control.
A little bit of Evil works this way.
Deal with it.
If someone has a “right” to a service, such as abortion or euthanasia, then someone else has a duty to provide it at no cost.
That is part of the reason my cousin got out of medical school...he was pretty much at the top of his class before the ACA was signed into law...He was one of about 3-4in his class to get out...
That statement is a self-contradiction, since the child in utero is an autonomous being with her own blood type, her own heart, etc. - just as her mother was in her mother...
Since when has the pro-abort position ever been logical?
That is part of the reason my cousin got out of medical school...he was pretty much at the top of his class before the ACA was signed into law...He was one of about 3-4in his class to get out...
The regional medical center right down from me in Washington State does not provide doctor-assisted suicide and it is not even a Catholic hospital.
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