Transcript The Right of Conscience and Religious Liberty

Don’t be
CONFUSED
 Health Right of Conscience
is not refusing to treat
because you don’t like or
approve of the patient, their
beliefs, attitudes or behavior.
 It is exercised when a
healthcare professional is
being asked or required to
participate in or facilitate
some way an action they
believe violates their ethical,
moral or religious beliefs.
 Protection of
someone’s right to
object does not equate
with support for that
position.
 Indeed, we must pay
special attention to
protecting the rights of
others when we do not
support their position.*
*(Claims of conscience rights can be abused)
This is Not a New Issue
In Healthcare
Moral Debate 2500 Years Ago
I will neither give a deadly drug
to anybody if asked for it, nor
will I make a suggestion to this
effect. Similarly I will not give to
a woman an abortive remedy. But
in purity and in holiness, I will
guard the sanctity of life and my
role as healer.
Hippocratic Oath, 429 BC
First Amendment
James Madison
The rights of conscience we never
submitted, we could not submit.
We are answerable for them to
our God.
I consider the government of the
U.S. as interdicted by the
Constitution from intermeddling
with religious institutions, their
doctrines, discipline, or exercises.
JAMES MADISON
Conscience is the most
sacred of all property the
exercise of that, being a
natural and unalienable
right.
The Religion of every man
must be left to the conviction and
conscience of every man; and it
is the right of every man to
exercise it as these may dictate.
Limited to federally funded programs.
No enforcement provisions.
 AMA reaffirms that neither physician,
hospital, nor hospital personnel shall
be required to perform any act
violative of personally held moral
principles. In these circumstances,
good medical practice requires only
that the physician or other
professional withdraw from the case,
so long as the withdrawal is
consistent with good medical practice.
 Except in emergencies, physicians
shall be free to choose whom to
serve, with whom who to associate
and the environment in which to
provide medical care.
United Nations
INTERNATIONAL COVENANT
ON
CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS
Everyone shall have the right
to freedom of thought,
conscience and religion. This
right shall include freedom to
have or to adopt a religion or
belief of his choice, and
freedom, either individually or
in community with others and
in public or private, to
manifest his religion or belief
in worship, observance,
practice and teaching.
The physician should be
free to make clinical and
ethical judgments
without inappropriate
outside interference.
Everyone has the right to
freedom of thought, conscience
and religion; this right includes…
freedom …to manifest his religion
or belief in worship, teaching,
practice and observance.
-
Pharmacist have a duty to act with conviction of conscience.
-
Code of Ethics, APhA.
the right of pharmacists… to decline to participate in therapies they
consider to be morally, religiously or ethically troubling.
- American Society of
Health-System Pharmacists
That is, a patient's very ability to choose these procedures or medications
is dependent upon the existence of a doctor who is willing to facilitate
whatever choice the patient makes. Consequently, a doctor's
unwillingness to act in a particular way due to her conscience becomes a
barrier to a patient's self-realization.
Efforts to Abolish Laws
 Abortion Access Project
 ACLU - Reproductive Freedom Project
 PCRC -Pro-Choice Resource Center
 Spotlight Campaign
 Merger Watch
 Maryland NARAL Hospital Provider
Project
 Planned Parenthood
American Board
Of
Obstetrics & Gynecology

New policy issued in
January 2008:
certification contingent on
compliance with ACOG
ethical principles.

Under pressure reversed
in 1/09.
HHS Policy Protecting Right of Conscience
Effective January 20, 2009
Can’t “discriminate in the employment,
promotion, termination, or the extension of
staff or other privileges to any physician
or other health care personnel because he
performed, assisted in the performance,
refused to perform, or refused to assist in
the performance of any lawful health
service or research activity on the grounds
that his performance or assistance in
performance of such service or activity
would be contrary to his religious beliefs
or moral convictions, or because of the
religious beliefs or moral convictions
concerning such activity themselves.”
By pro-abortions groups, some
politicians and media
False claims,
e.g., women will not be
allowed contraception
Media blitz
Legal action taken
1/15/09 - PP, ACLU, 7
State Attorney Generals
file suit in CT to
overturn
• February 2009
• President Obama
announces he will
rescind the regulation
• April 9, 2009
• -30 Day Public Comment Period ends
• 300,000 comments
• All reference to
regulations taken off
HHS website.
• Gutted 2/11
The Washington Post reports that the Department of Health
and Human Services gutted most of a federal regulation that
in 2008 broadened existing conscience protection rules.
CMDA Faith Focused Healthcare
Professionals Survey
• 40% report being pressured to
compromise convictions
• >43% know someone else who
was pressured
• >24% have lost position,
promotion or compensation as
a result
• >88% think the problem is
getting worse
Survey of 2,400 Physicians, Nurses, Pharmacists, etc.
NURSE ‘FORCED’ TO HELP ABORT – NYPOST.com
April 29, 2010
NEW YORK — Alliance Defense Fund
attorneys filed a lawsuit Friday against Mt.
Sinai Hospital in New York state court on
behalf of a nurse forced to participate in a
late-term abortion procedure under threat of
disciplinary action, including possible
termination and loss of her license.
Nov. 24, 2010
NEW YORK - However, in today's ruling
the court found that there is no right to
private action or private remedy under the
statue cited by DeCarlo in her suit - the
so-called "Church Amendment.” Her suit
was summarily dismissed.
November 11, 2011
NEWARK, N.J. – “One, Fe Vinoya, a nurse for
21 years, said she and her fellow 15 plaintiffs
“have dedicated our lives to helping patients. Our
managers told us very clearly that all same-day
surgery unit nurses must immediately begin
training in and assisting abortion patients,
including all aspects of those patients’ care
during their visit,” she said. “They did this in
spite of our repeated effort to tell them we had
religious and moral objections. They said very
clearly that if we did not assist we would face
termination.”
December 11, 2011
Ms. Fe Vinoya
ABC News – “Twelve nurses who sued one of the
state’s largest hospitals after claiming they were
forced to assist in abortions over their religious
and moral objections reached a deal Thursday
with their employer in federal court. Under the
agreement, 12 nurses in the same-day surgery unit
of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of
New Jersey can remain in their current positions
and not be compelled to assist in any part of an
abortion procedure.”
• Secretary of HHS
• Authority -> Preventative Care Coverage
• Must provide all FDA Approved Contraceptives
• Unless Religious Employer:
(a) Whose purpose is the
inculcation of religious values;
(b) That primarily employs
persons who share the religious
tenets of the employer;
(c) That primarily serves
persons who share the religious
tenets of the employer; and
(d) That is a nonprofit
organization under section
6033(a)(2)(A)(i) or (iii) of the
IRS Code
• 88% Americans say it is
important that they have a
similar set of moral beliefs
as their healthcare
professional
• 87% oppose forcing
professionals to violate
their moral objections
• 63% support conscience
regulations
• 54% less likely to vote for
Congressman that oppose
ROC
The Polling Company,
On some positions cowardice asks the question,
'Is it safe?'
Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?'
Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'
But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'
And there comes a time when one must take a
position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor
popular. But ... because it is right.
To Kill
A Mockingbird
Harper Lee, 1960
_______________
The one thing
that doesn't abide
by majority rule
is a person's
conscience.
Linda Rankin, Bioethicist, U of TN
In Christian Science Monitor
"Must the citizen ever
for a moment, or in
the least degree,
resign his conscience
to the legislator?
Why has every man a
conscience then? I
think that we should
be men first, and
subjects afterward.
The only obligation
which I have a right
to assume is to do at
anytime what I think
right."
--Henry David Thoreau, Civil
Disobedience (1849)
Conscience & Healthcare
 Is our healthcare system in need of more consciencedriven doctors or more "ethically neutered" doctors?
 Do we want medical schools to systematically strip our
future doctors from any and all religious and ethical
convictions that have not been approved by the state?
 Your doctor's conscience may some day be the last line
of protection between you and those who would profit
from your early death.
Why Don’t Some MD’s Refer?
 Referral means:
 I endorse the competency,
judgment and ethics of
the doctor to whom I’m
referring.
 I enter into a professional
relationship with that
doctor.
 I will receive a report back
from him.
 I believe they will “do no
harm.”
 Moral complicity with evil
does not exist when all the
following conditions are
satisfied:
 our intent is for good;
 the association with the past or
present evil is sufficiently
uncertain, or the act is
sufficiently distanced from the
original evil act; and
 the action does not reward,
perpetuate, justify, cooperate
with, or ignore the original evil.
What will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call
slavery wrong and join them it right. And this must be
cone thoroughly – done in acts as well as words. Silence
will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly
with them…. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected
from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease
to believe that all their troubles proceeds from us.
Abraham Lincoln
Cooper Union address of 1860
The extent to which an institution seeks to expunge
individual conscience and moral autonomy is the
extent to which it is totalitarian and dangerous. The
idea that I resign my conscience to the institution or
to the state is perhaps the single most pernicious
notion in human history. It is at the heart of the
wars and genocides of this century and the last.
Crispin Sartwell
Los Angeles Times 9/2/08
Self Described “Pro-Choice Atheist”
 <freedom2care.org>
 <cmda.org>
 Ethics Statements, PP’s,
Standards for Life, “Just Add
Water”, DVD’s
 <consciencelaws.org>
 “Protecting the Health Care
Provider's Right of Conscience”
Teresa Colette, JD <chbd.org>
 Issues of Conscience
Laurel Hughes