Are Pro-Life Healthcare Providers Becoming an Endangered Species?

e3mil.com ^ | 7/1/03 | Nancy Valko, RN

[nickcarraway]

At the urging of Planned Parenthood, the Nevada state Assembly approved an amendment in April to stop pharmacists with religious objections from refusing to fill prescriptions for any drug, including abortifacient contraceptives and the so-called "morning after" pill.

The Implications of Conscience

New York City hospitals now require abortion training for all their OB/GYN resident doctors unless they invoke a narrowly written conscience clause. The Oregon Nursing Association has issued guidelines for assisted suicide that prohibit nurses from making "unwarranted, judgmental comments or actions" to patients, families or other colleagues when patients decide to kill themselves with doctor-prescribed lethal overdoses.

Slowly but surely, more and more pro-life doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals are getting the message that they and their views are unwelcome in today's health care system. But these public items tell only a small part of the story. Intimidation, harassment and coercion are becoming increasingly common as pro-life health care providers try to advocate for both their patients and their professional ethics.

For example, a nurse was threatened with firing after she refused to follow a doctor's verbal order to increase an intravenous morphine drip "until he stops breathing" on a patient who continued to survive despite having a ventilator removed. An OB/GYN physician was told by other doctors that they would no longer refer patients to him if he continued to sign an annual pro-life ad. Three California nurses were suspended after they reported a doctor who later admitted giving a lethal injection to a child. An insurance company executive speaking on ethics committees at a conference recommended that such committees avoid appointing "family values" members.

Unfortunately, these reprehensible acts are not confined to just secular health care institutions.

A dedicated nurse who cared for elderly nuns in a Catholic facility for over a decade was told she could resign when she objected to the slow starvation and dehydration deaths of two of her beloved nuns. Several doctors and nurses working at Catholic hospitals have personally told me about similar incidents, including other supposedly prohibited actions such as sterilizations, referrals to Planned Parenthood and even some abortions. Amazingly, hospital administrators often told them that these procedures were ethically allowed according to some prominent Catholic ethicists.

Years ago when I was the co-chair of the St. Louis Archdiocesan Pro-Life Committee, I was asked by the late Archbishop May why I didn't work as a nurse at a Catholic institution. He was shocked when I told him that I felt safer at a secular institution that at least understood the implications of conscience rights rather than at a Catholic institution, which could try to talk me out of them.

I wasn't kidding.

The Slippery Slope

Before the invention of the Pill and the legalization of abortion, medical ethics principles were relatively simple, unambiguous and, with few exceptions, followed by doctors and nurses. The Hippocratic oath prohibiting abortion and euthanasia was a mainstay of medical education.

However, the beginnings of a drastic change started with the furor over the invention of the Pill and accelerated when the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) allowed the redefinition of conception from fertilization to the later implantation of the embryo into a woman's uterus, thus blurring the distinction between contraception and abortion by ignoring scientific fact.

The American Medical Association (AMA) softened its long-standing opposition to abortion as state laws on abortion were being relaxed in the 1960s and 1970s. After the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the AMA declared abortion to be an ethical healthcare procedure and now opposes almost any restrictions on abortion practice.

With legality rather than principle becoming a deciding factor in medical ethics, the standard of the Hippocratic oath had to be revised and now it is rarely used at all. Both the prohibition of abortion and euthanasia in the oath as well as the sacred commitment of the doctor to the individual patient were seen as obstacles to a more "enlightened" and modern healthcare system. Healthcare is now seen by many as an important part of societal reform to a more "inclusive" and less "judgmental" culture.

Thus, it is not surprising that pro-life health care providers are now portrayed as divisive to their professions and even a threat to patients' rights when they refuse to conform to the Culture of Death.

When the infamous Roe v. Wade decision on abortion was handed down, it was assumed that healthcare providers would not be forced to participate in abortion. However, the reality of legalizing abortion soon led many states to pass conscience rights legislation on abortion to protect doctors and nurses who object. Unfortunately, this still has not adequately protected doctors and nurses from intimidation, harassment or from obstacles to career advancement because they do not provide what is now called "full service" on "reproductive rights".

Many pro-life healthcare providers thought they would be safe if they chose a specialty other than OB/GYN or labor and delivery. But with the court decisions and laws legalizing the withdrawal of basic medical treatment, the acceptance of terminal sedation as comfort care, the legalization of assisted suicide in Oregon and the push for such laws in other states, etc., there is now almost no area of medicine where a pro-life healthcare provider can avoid ethical dilemmas.

And instead of unity, the medical professions have now become virtual war zones with many ethical doctors and nurses reluctant to even express their views or reveal that they are pro-life. Unfortunately, the healthcare professions, which rely on universal standards to protect both their members and the public, cannot long be trusted when their members can have diametrically opposed views on life and death. Coexistence of such disparate views ultimately becomes impossible because, as the Bible says, a man cannot serve two masters and must eventually choose one over the other. Thus, conscience rights help but they are not enough.

The Thin White Line

Pro-life healthcare providers are becoming a thin, white-coat line trying to protect both their patients and the public from an ever-expanding Culture of Death. And without such people of principle, there is no possibility of maintaining a pro-life movement.

With the current "politically correct" view that people should not judge the actions of others and the rise of moral relativism in all areas of personal ethics, far too many people are being intimidated into silence or despair. But we must remember that we are called to be persistent and that the ultimate success is God's.

And there are already glimmers of hope. For example, the efforts of disability, pro-life and other organizations have so far helped to defeat efforts to legalize Oregon-style assisted suicide in other states. The courage of Jill Stanek, the nurse who exposed the scandal of neglecting newborn abortion survivors to death in her hospital and was finally fired, has led to President Bush signing the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act this year. The incident of the nurse who refused to increase a morphine drip to euthanize a patient opened many eyes among her colleagues and recently an entire division of nurses refused to follow a doctor's order to use morphine to terminally sedate a patient — and the doctor backed down.

The reform of medical ethics has to come from both inside the medical profession and from the public. It is only when the highest standards are insisted upon that the ongoing corruption of the healthcare professions can be stopped and trust restored.

But first we must all accept the fact that evil never limits itself and always seeks to expand. Now is the time to make truly ethical healthcare the norm and stop the Culture of Death. Otherwise, we all can become an endangered species.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

Since the beginning of time people have been able to take their own lives by a variety of methods. Today those individuals have even more choices. There is absolutely no need to create laws to force other people to kill you. You want to die? Buy a gun and a bullet and do it yourself. Hospitals are not killing fields nor should health professionals be made executioners.

[RJCogburn]

There is absolutely no need to create laws to force other people to kill you.

But if I wish to die, have a terminal condition, and there is a willing compassionate physician to make it happen, he should not be prohibited from acting.

[jpconservative]

The Wisconsin State Assembly just passed a modernization of the conscience clause laws by adding six new procedures that health care professionals would be protected from their refusal to participate based upon their creed.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL went nuts. A Democratic state rep from Milwaukee equated the pro-life movement with Islamic Jihad.

The same folks who shout choice, do not want to extend it to health care professionals who choose to preserve life and not destroy it.

[andysandmikesmom]

During my fathers last few days alive, he was in pain from his cancer, so the docs gave him some morphine...this relieved him for a while, but within about two hours, the pain came back, and was worse...so they put him on a heavy morphine drip, heavy enough to take away his pain...

But, as the docs warned me, that heavy of a morphine drip, while relieving dads pain, would almost certainly produce a coma in him, a coma from which he would never recover...

So the choice was, did I allow him to be concious, and in terrible pain, or did I allow him to have enough pain medication to relieve his pain, tho it might hasten his death...it was my choice, and my choice alone...my mother had Alzheimers, and was not able to make the choice...my only sibling was already dead...so it was up to me...I knew my dad....I knew he did not want pain, he did not want to live on machines, ,he did not want to be force fed...

He wanted to die, when his time had come, to die in peace...so I chose for the continuous heavy morphine drip to continue...and dad died one day later, quietly, ,peacefully, and free from pain...

There are those who want to call that murder...they feel my dad should have continue on in pain, that suffering is good for you...

I could not bear to see him cry, to hear him howl in pain...I am at peace with my decision, just as I allowed him to die in peace...

I am the one who has to live with my decision...and I will always feel I made the only decision possible...

[Slyfox]

I should add, healers cannot simultaneously be killers.

I guess it all depends on how you define the word 'heal'. I once talked to a man who had just had come out of an abortion clinic with his wife who was praising the abortionist and said that she had told him that his wife was 'saved' because she aborted the fetus. Trouble was she told that to everybody she managed to abort. She 'healed' by 'killing'.

[JRandomFreeper]

Without comment on your decision,

You should comment. I have the same decision, and expect to be upbrided by the faithful. As is right.

I am human. I do fail. I require brothers and sisters to correct me and main-stay me when wrong.

/john

[BlackElk]

I will refer to my own Roman Catholic Faith, not to preach to you but to say that your decision is better supported than you may realize, whatever your own faith may or may not be. You obviously loved your father very much and did what you did motivated by that love. The situation you describe ios not a mercy-killing. It was NOT homicide of any sort, much less murder. It was a mature recognition of reality and and a reasoned and moral decision after weighing the considerations most judiciously with regard for your father's status.

A bit of research should disclose that the pope and the Roman Catholic Church agree with you. Your father's physical condition was irreversible and reasonably viewed as imminently fatal. He was in extreme pain. The heavy morphine drip would eliminate his experience of pain by inducing his coma. As I understand it, John Paul II, commenting on such situations, has observed that each human life has an inherent dignity which must not be transgressed. The prolonging of life by medical means when no hope is present is an affront to that dignity. The narcotic administered, not to kill but to ease pain, merely placed your father in the irreversible coma and did not cause death where death was not already imminent.

I like to think that I have earned a reputation here as a hardliner on social issues. If you think that I would condemn you, you would be wrong. If I had been in your shoes, I would have made the same decision. You made a moral choice and, it seems to me, that you made THE moral choice. You have nothing to apologize for and you are right not to apologize.

The only minor bone I would pick is that, as painful as the suffering of a loved one can be for thee or me, OUR suffering is not sufficient reason to allow them to slip away. In your father's case, this was a distinction without a difference. You did the right thing.

Death is a gift that God has provided to ease and end the earthly suffering of the dying person. Even non-believing novelists and scriptwriters have used their skills to speculate on the consequences of living for hundreds of years beyond a now normal lifespan even without the burdens of illness and aging. As it is natural that, once conceived, we should be born, it is also natural that we should expect death at an appropriate time and be prepared for it. Andy and Mike are blessed to have such a mom. May God bless and keep your father and your mother and may he bless you and yours.

[bonesmccoy]

sir,

healthcare has no choice.

If you are a citizen, there are regions where the physician supply is directly and incontrovertibly manipulated by illegal loan arrangements. The doctors don't know better because they can not afford attorney fees.

If you are a physician, you are in debt to the local hospital (because banks won't give business loans). If the local hospital dictates particular procedures to be done, you must carry out your hospital administrator's directives or face economic ruin.

[bonesmccoy]

sir,

healthcare has no choice.

If you are a citizen, there are regions where the physician supply is directly and incontrovertibly manipulated by illegal loan arrangements. The doctors don't know better because they can not afford attorney fees.

If you are a physician, you are in debt to the local hospital (because banks won't give business loans). If the local hospital dictates particular procedures to be done, you must carry out your hospital administrator's directives or face economic ruin.

[friendly]

"Choice" has a truly Orwellian "1984" meaning for baby assassins, liberal democrats, and those who advocate the murder of the elderly and disabled.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

This is one of the great moral ironies of our time. On the one hand, I'm glad there are laws on the books to prevent suicide and/or assisted suicide. On the other hand, I understand why it happens.

Conservatives' opposition to Youth-in-Asia is based on the perverse manipulations by leftist governments that result, such as what happened in Leftist Nazi Germany. And Dr. Kovorkian wasn't careful enough about making sure that the people he killed really wanted to do it. I heard reports that many were pressured into it by their families to save money and/or reduce hassle.

I played an evil, old game when I was a kid: Dungeons & Dragons. And yes, it was a bad influence on some kids in some ways, promoting black magic, pagan gods, the absurd desire to become a god. And it tempted children to consider what it might be like to be evil. It brought the best and the worst out of you. I resisted all that was wrong as I understood the Bible better. In fact, I made up different versions of it.

But D&D taught me some useful and important things. One of them was 'ethical alignments'.

There were three kinds of good and three kinds of lawfulness. So please try to imagine a chart:

Lawful Good...........Neutral Good.......Chaotic Good

Lawful Neutral.........Pure Neutral.........Chaotic Neutral

Lawful Evil.............Neutral Evil..........Chaotic Evil


[I tend to think of pure neutral as schitzophrenia or something of that nature, although leftists think of pure neutral as 'seeking the Balance' and 'moral maturity'].

This is a great way to think about all the different moral conflicts. Chaos thinks that Law waters down all the zest in life. Law believes that law alone can make this world a better place. Both are correct! Which is why I am Neutral Good. I don't want too much law, which we currently have. But at the same time, I would not want complete anarchy.

God said, "Thou shalt not kill!" And that is God's Word. But God also said the Golden Rule, [essentially, please don't take this as an exact quote] "Do unto others as thou wouldst have done unto thyself". My friend, thinking in terms of law vs. chaos, I would say you acted in a neutral or chaotic manner with the best of intensions. Good for you!

[wideawake]

BlackElk is correct. You made the only choice you could make. There was nothing you could do to save his life.

There was a chance he could have died (as he did) through the increased drip, but there was also a chance that he could have lived longer in less pain through the drip. Not even a doctor could flawlessly predict what would happen.

You did right by your dad. God bless you.

[Mamzelle]

There is a Grand Canyon of difference between assisted suicide and allowing the dying to ease out of life without painful and fruitless interference.

[Mr. Silverback]

The enemy continues their pro-coercion work.

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[andysandmikesmom]

Thank you so much for your very sweet posting to me...I am of no religious persuasion, I just read my Bible every day, I even sometimes go to the Religious Threads here on FR...they can also be very informative...

I thank you so much for your detailing to me, the Catholic churchs and the Popes stand on this matter...it is of great comfort to me...

After my dad died, I took mom in to live with me and my family, which she did for another two years before she died, at home, with us, in her own bed, surrounded by her family...She had no real physical pain, but it was just painful to see her, not remembering anything or anyone from her past...thankfully, she slipped quietly away froms us, on a warm Sunday evening...

My older boy, Mike, died before either my mom or dad did...he was 15 yrs old, when he died from complications of a rather rare and usually terminal type of leukemia...his final incident, was a massive cerebral hemorrhage which initially destroyed half his brain, and left him brain dead two days later...all the while he was also on a heavy morphine drip, as tho he was already in a coma from the hemorrhage, the docs were not sure if he was feeling any pain or not...so he was on morphine, for two days before he also died...it was so very difficult to have him removed from life support, yet we knew because he was brain dead, and also in a second relapse of his leukemia, there was no point to keeping him hooked up to machines...

It sometimes seems I have had my share of having to make medical decisions for my loved ones, and I do so, with God in mind, and lots of prayer....I do know, that my mom, my dad, and my dear Mike are in Gods good care, and that He is caring for them, and loving them, as only He can do...

Again, thanks so much for your comments...they mean a lot to me...

[andysandmikesmom]

Thank you also for your comments...I did act with the best of intentions, and did for my dad, what I hoped someone would do for me, if placed in that same situation...

My dad had made his wishes known to me, several times during his illness, because he knew I would be the one faced with all the decisions...I wanted to honor him, by abiding by his wishes, which I believe I did, by alleviting his awful pain...

Again, thanks...

[andysandmikesmom]

Thank you for your comments...you are right, ,the docs are never quite sure, what giving that morphine drip could have done...thankfully, dads doc assured me, that he would do whatever we wished for my dad, and that pain alleviation was of the greatest importance, ,and he would try to make sure, that dad did not suffer in pain...

Ironically, that same wonderful doc, a young doc, really, ,just in his 30s, got bone cancer a year after my dad died, and he died within six months...we were so very sad, as he was just a wonderful cancer specialist who had great healing skill, and great compassion for all of his patients....

Again, thanks for the comments..

[andysandmikesmom]

Yes, I believe you are correct...

We actually did have interference from one of my dads docs, his GP...this doc, thought it was wrong for my dad to have so much morphine...he also believed, earlier in my dads disease, when dad was not eating much, that we should medically intervene, and have a feeding tube inserted...dad was opposed to this, and the GP wanted me to overrule my dad, and allow the feeding tube...I did not bow to the GPs pressure, and he was really not happy with us...

But it was not the docs decision, it was dads...

[Mamzelle]

If you got your way, there was advice and discomfort on the doc's part, not interference. These days, nobody wants to look like Kevorkian, who probably did more to hurt the cause of reasoned DNR decisions than anyone. Helping to ease the dying has a long history and tradition, but recent publicity destroyed the discretion and intimacy...

[victim soul]

ping read later -- UGH!!!!!