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Physician Conscience Blog III (50 comments)
Posted by: Michael LeavittThursday, August 21st, 2008
I have on two previous occasions written in my blog about the principle of health care provider conscience. Federal law is explicit and unwavering in protecting federally funded medical practitioners from being coerced into providing treatments they find morally objectionable. This became a topical matter when the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued guidelines that could shape board certification requirements and necessitate a doctor to perform abortions to be considered competent.
Physician certification is a powerful instrument. Without it, a doctor cannot practice the specialty. Putting doctors (or any one who assists them) in a position where they are forced to violate their consciences in order to meet a standard of competence violates more than federal law. It violates decency and the core value of personal liberty. Freedom of expression and action are unfit barter for admission to medical employment or training.
As Secretary of Health and Human Services, I called on the organization that oversees Ob-Gyn board certification to alter its guidelines to assert that refusal to violate conscience will not be used to block board certification. Their answer was dodgy and unsatisfying.
Today, HHS will file a rule in the Federal Register aimed at increasing compliance with existing federal laws protecting provider conscience. The proposed rule clarifies that non-discrimination rules apply to institutional health care providers as well as to individual employees working for recipients of certain funds from HHS. It requires recipients of certain HHS funds to certify their compliance with laws protecting provider conscience rights. The HHS Office for Civil Rights is designated as the entity to receive complaints of discrimination addressed by the statute or the proposed regulation.
The proposed rule also charges HHS officials to work with any state or local government or entity that may be violating the law or the proposed rule to encourage voluntary steps to remedy the problem. If they fail to fix the problem, it empowers HHS officials to consider a range of sanctions including termination of funding and the return of funds paid out while they were in violation. The proposed rule is open for comment in the Federal Register for 30 days.
Our nation was built on a foundation of free speech. The first principle of free speech is protected conscience. This proposed rule is a fundamental protection for medical providers to follow theirs.
50 Responses to “Physician Conscience Blog III”
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Thank you Planned Parenthood and other organizations for forcing HHS to back down from their plans to redefine abortion to include birth control. HHS attempts to place additional hurdles in the path of vulnerable women who need comprehensive medical care are despicable, but it could have been worse (and would have been if nobody had spoken out).
As the spouse of a physician, we take the Hippocractic Oath seriously. It says, “first do no harm.” Infanticide certainly comes under the heading of harm. You can call it CHOICE or anything else you want but it is murder just the same. And those who practice it will have to answer for their decisions. But forcing those who abide by the Judeo-Chritian ethics and the Ten Commandments, which has been the social code of Justice for the past 5,000 years in the civilized world, you will be forcing them to be murderers. May God have mercy on us as a people and as a nation.
Secretary Leavitt, since you support the faith-based right-of-conscience for physicians to refuse service to patients, do you also support the faith-based right-of-conscience for Muslim cab drivers to refuse service to passengers that happen to be carrying unopened alcohol? (cf Minneapolis-St. Paul airport-area)
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/02/27/cabhearing/
If not, please explain the difference between these instances of faith-based refusal-of-service, because they seem identical from where I’m sitting. Thanks in advance.
No person including physicians or religious institutions should be forced to provide a service they believe is clearly immoral. As a faculty member I have told students of various faiths that I would do all I could to help them not violate their conscience as they care for patients. Thank you for this rule Secretary Mark Leavitt.
Patrick Mongan, MD, MAPS
Thank you Secretary Leavitt for clarifying your position. I know from your past writing that you are a highly intelligent man but religion can do strange things to intelligence and so we all can use a wakeup call now and then. Here is an experience that I had in the 70’s that I will use to try to use as illustration of the fine lines that we walk when people work for federally funded organization.
I was working in a Navy exchange warehouse and I was told to process some orders for cigarettes, as my boss new that I was quite allergic to tobacco, I tried to get out of that part of the job by saying the it violated my conscience to handle tobacco. She said that if I didn’t move the cigarettes, I would be out of a job because government jobs will be done without religious bias. I squeezed and wheezed a lot as I moved the cigarettes but she had made her point.
Federally funded jobs should not be done with religious bias, you really should stop recommending that anyone’s rights should be allowed to step on someone else’s rights just because they have one religion verses another. Please wake up and stop blindly allowing the “pro-life” religious walk on the rights of those that follow an approach of not producing unwanted children.
Freedom of Speech should be available to all. All people in this land of liberty should be able to say “no” to actions with which they disagree. Being forced to participate in any activity against one’s conscience or be threatened with loss of employment does not sound like the “land of the free”. Instead it appears like an egocentric toddler, demanding his own way, without any regard for others. Everyone knows one demand left unchallenged leads to more demands.
Those who believe in such actions as abortion will always exist for those who want such services. Why do they feel threatened when others disagree? Is it necessary for them to have others’ approval?
We support you 100% & the physicians concience rights. Please continue to fight for this important issue.
Secretary Leavitt, it should be blatantly obvious why the idea of health care provider conscience is wrong. But since this proposal has gotten as far as it has it has it clearly needs to be stated again.
It opens the ground for anyone to object to anything for any reason. A person going in for medical care is entitled the best and most modern knowledge that medicine and science can offer. It should not be limited to an individual’s doctor’s moral beliefs.
We (ostensibly, anyway) live in a secular society. That means in matters like this, you either leave your personal beliefs at home, or you look for different employment.
I’m sure it has already been pointed out to you the many dilemmas that such a law could lead to (Muslim male doctors who don’t want to treat women, etc). These are legitimate concerns and this proposed law violates simple common sense.
Moreover does not the Hippocractic Oath dictate that all possible care should be given to the patient? Any health care worker opting out of treatment based on their personal beliefs is violating that oath.
I want to live in a secular country, not a religious one. Please don’t allow this proposal to go forward.
Most ethical issues are not simple. In a complex diverse society they often involve conflicts between reasonable ethical positions. In general most Americans support the freedom of a person not to act against their conscience, but they also support the right of woman to birth control and also to an abortion at least under some conditions. Most Americans also recognize that for most women there are times when using birth control is the socially responsible and ethical action and that even woman opposed to abortion might be forced into that option when faced with a tubule pregnancy or other life threatening conditions. In an area where there is a large choice of physicians and pharmacists there need be no conflict between these positions. If though a physician or pharmacist chooses to practice his or her profession in an area where there is limited access to other suppliers of such services he or she is ethically and should be legally required to provide birth control services and in emergencies an abortion. As a personal note a relative of my wife who lives in rural Oklahoma had a tubule pregnancy and was refused treatment by a prominent local physician.
Secretary Leavitt, thank you for working to ensure conscience protections for physicians. No physician, nurse practioner, or for that matter, anyone in the medical profession, should be forced against their will to provide abortions. The original Hippocratic Oath made that quite clear. Thank you for the ability to comment on the proposed rule.
By taking this position, you’re denying healthcare to the poor who cannot afford to go get a second opinion.
But Praise Jesus, right? You’re doing what’s right for your own mind while the poor pay for it.
Secretary Leavitt, I’m concerned that patient care is going to vary widely from state to state and region to region if your conscience clause is found acceptable. You may state that “This regulation does not limit patient access to health care,” but it’s not clear how that’s the case. What happens if the one pharmacist in town refuses to fulfill a request for emergency contraception? Why should that pharmacist’s conscience outweigh a woman’s desire for medical care that she is willing to pay for?
Seceretary Leavitt,
As a woman who values choice, I am deeply concerned by this proposed rule. Of course, if a physician opposes abortion or contraceptives due to his or her moral values, he or she should not be forced to perform an abortion or prescribe contraceptives. However, if a physician who chooses that stance refuses to even refer his or her patient to another doctor, that is discriminatory towards the patient. Just as the physician should not be pressured by the patient to perform an abortion against his or her will, the patient should not be pressured to refrain from getting an abortion against her will. It seems that in your attempt to protect physicians’ rights, you are willing to sacrifice the rights of patients.
Others who have commented in favor of the proposed rule have suggested that patients have the freedom to seek different physicians whose values are more in line with their own. This is not always the case. Most insurance plans restrict patients’ choices when it comes to health care providers, and many insurances will not pay for outside health care providers without a referral from a physician on their list. By refusing to refer a patient to a doctor who is willing to perform an abortion or prescribe contraception, a physician can literally make that healthcare option unaffordable for a low-income patient.
Please reconsider this rule due to the impact it will have on low-income women. Patients have a right to choice just as much as physicians.
Sincerely,
Sarah Pyles
I hope St. Michael Leavitt and the rest of his followers will send me some help. If you do not want to perform abortions, dispense birth control, etc. – do not become a physician, and do not take the Hippocratic Oath. Stop the lying and stop the hypocrisy. You took an oath and if you no longer believe in that oath – stop for the sake of the profession and the sake of patients who may still regard medicine and pharmacy as a profession – not a hobby, not a political platform, not a moral platform.
I am a physician and I have no control over who doesn’t want to get pregnant, and who doesn’t want their pregnancy. I am expected to treat all patients professionally and ethically without regard to race, creed, religion, or national origin – both theirs and mine. Perhaps we will some day find it morally objectionable if you are obese, smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, etc. In the meantime patients need professional physicians and pharmacists and the last thing they should have to worry about is what the “medical professional” thinks about them, and what the “professional” will and won’t do based on their religious, political, ethical, or any other personal beliefs. All the patient should have to know is that he/she is being treated by a professional, ethical, and unbiased physician, pharmacist, or nurse. There is a very valid and very sound reason that we keep religion out of our schools, court houses, legislatures, medical offices, hospitals, and pharmacies. I am still looking for a pharmacist who will dispense birth control pills in my little town – because my pharmacist believes contraception is objectionable. I find his actions and the actions of his “moral professional companions” to be objectionable, unethical, and unprofessional. I hope each one of these moral professionals doesn’t have to rely on the professionalism and compassion of another medical professional who happens to find their lifestyle, sexual preference, race, religion, or medical condition morally, medically, ethically, or politically objectionable.
“Our nation was built on a foundation of free speech. The first principle of free speech is protected conscience.” I’m glad you acknowledge this. Does that mean that you will do everything in your considerable power to have the international gag order on abortion information lifted? Does it mean that you will do everything in your power to prevent one from being instituted in the US? Or do you only feel that free speech is protected when the speaker agrees with your anti-abortion sentiments?
Here’s another question. If a pharmacist is a vegan, can they refuse to fill any prescriptions that were obtained from animal sources, like Premarin, animal source insulin or thyroid medicine, or vaccines that contain egg? What if that pharmacist were the only one in small town.
Medical practitioners should give full, accurate and up-to-date information on a patient’s condition. I don’t go to my rabbi for medical advice, and I don’t want my doctor to give me philosophical advice.
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. If you do not want to provide the service your job entails you need a new job. It is not my responsibility to pay you to give me bad advice. You’re right to not do something you are morally opposed to is not your right to endanger me for your own benefit. Everyone has rights, not just doctors and nurses. If you cannot perform your duties then you are violating my right to free and open access to medical care.
Nobody should be able to deny me the best medical care and advice available. Would you fight to protect a Jehovah’s Witness moral opposition to blood transfusions in an emergency room? That’s where this is headed. Doctors who let women die because they are muslim, or let us die from lack of blood because they do not believe in blood transfusions.
This is a really stupid idea.
The foundation of free speech is speech in its respected and limited roles. You don’t shout fire in a crowded theater; you don’t deputize doctors to lecture women. What you’re doing is putting your ideology over the health of patients and the trust the patient puts in her doctor, and trying to make it sound pretty. For shame.
By Secretary Leavitt’s logic and reading of Federal anti-discrimination law, a city could be forced to hire as a fireman someone who had religious objections to putting out fires, as a police officer someone who did not believe in arresting those who break the law (not as unlikely as the fireman case), and someone could be made a judge in a criminal court who had religious objections to imprisoning people – not that unusual a belief among persons I know.
The point is this: To be a professional in an area where life and death decisions are involved is to take on the obligation – and in many cases an oath – to give the best service possible under the accepted guidelines of the profession. For medical providers, this means to administer the best medical care possible under the circumstances, irrespective of one’s personal beliefs.
Under the Administration’s proposed regulation, a hospital would be forced to hire a doctor or nurse who believed that blood transfusions were against God’s will, as certain religious groups hold.
Those who applaud this proposal should stop and think if they would want themselves or a loved one to be taken to an ER where the personnel held such a belief. Under this proposal, there is nothing to rule out that possibility.
Sir, this is unconscionable. Doctors are, presumably, smart people who are aware of the demands each specialty entails. Surely if they find objectionable such an important aspect of a specialty (such as prescribing contraceptives to women), perhaps they would do better to find an alternative field in which their moral sensibilities would be less damaged by carrying out their basic duties. I should think that such a choice would be easy for such educated people as members of the medical profession, and they should hardly need legislative paternalism to help them with such a simple decision.
If you don’t want to perform the basic functions of an OB-GYN, find a different field. That way you are able to live your life, and the women (and men who are part of these choices as well) are able to live theirs.
Simple, no?
Thanks to everyone who protests the men of congress deciding what the women of America should and should not be allowed to do with their bodies! Thanks to planned parenthood for standing up and making our voices heard!
I do agree that no-one should be forced to preform a service they find wrong. so if your a doctor or pharmacist and you believe contraception and abortions are wrong, perhaps you are in the wrong profession, or at very least in the wrong area of their profession. but no ones personal moral beliefs should stand in the way of my choices about my body and my reproductive health.
Thank you Secretary Leavitt for taking a stand on behalf of diversity and tolerance. I’ve read your regulations and am reminded of why those are considered virtues in our pluralistic society. We may not all agree, but we can at least respect each other and not try to coerce people into obeying our privately held beliefs. This is a good example of tolerance at its best – you’re recognizing that reasonable people disagree on abortion and other things and that everyone should be encouraged to serve others through medicine. Well done!
Thank you Secretary Leavitt for your leadership in this matter. There seems to be some thought on this board that health professionals must check their conscience at the door. I know I don’t want the doctor working on me or my family to be operating without a conscience.
The First Amendment reads in part: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”
Please explain how this rule does not implicitly establish and approve a particular variety of religion, specifically your Christian one.
I devoutly hope there are a few lawsuits being filed as I type.
I’m sorry–I thought you were in charge of “Health and Human Services”–not “The Department of Religious Convictions to Prevent Licensed Physicians from Performing their Jobs”.
Where does this stop? Can practitioners of Hinduism refuse to do organ transplants in the name of violating the tenets of reincarnation? Will men seeking vasectomies be refused if a surgeon views the surgery as denying the ability to pro-create? Seriously, this so-called provider conscience legislation is an absolute farce.
You mentioned that “Federal law is explicit and unwavering in protecting federally funded medical practitioners from being coerced into providing treatments they find morally objectionable.” Who is being coerced? Are doctors being threatened with castration if they don’t provide certain services? This is laughable.
You seek to erode choices for individuals who have every right to be in total control of the choices they make for the health care of their own bodies. Sure there are providers out there who won’t have a problem providing abortions (since that’s what this piece of crap set of “guidelines” is about, let’s be honest)–but with each little erosion of choice or additional restriction on providing such services, it becomes more and more difficult to find effective, SAFE alternatives for women’s reproductive and family planning choices.
I’d be willing to bet, Mr. Leavitt, that if you were a woman you’d feel a lot differently having to battle for your reproductive rights when faced with such a horrendous move such as the one you’re proposing.
Disgusted in Madison.
Secretary Leavitt, thank you for revising the proposed rule. Your original attempt to redefine all birth control and family planning as abortion was unconscionable and wholly unsupportable, morally, ethically, and legally.
But the new version retains a hole big enough to drive the proverbial Mack truck through: The so called right to refuse to refer a patient for a service that is legal and regarded as ethical and moral by the great majority of American citizens.
By extension this new draft rule empowers anyone with any objection, provided it’s couched in terms of conscience, to not just refuse treatment but to refuse referral and deny access to treatment that may be critical. You propose to make it legal to deny care to a rape victim, to block access to an abortion for a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, to block access to any medical procedure to which a care giver has some personal objection. (Implicit in the rule is the assumption that all women who seek birth control assistance are immoral.) In other words it gives license to an individual to deny care to a patient based not on clinical data but solely on personal beliefs. That is unethical and contrary to the spirit of American traditions.
You need to either rewrite the rule another time or withdraw it entirely to bring it in line with what most Americans could support.
Secretary Leavitt,
Thank you for solidifying the rights of those who provide health care in our country. This is such an important step, especially for those of us who are not physicians but still have a role in the care of patients. This is a desperately needed regulation that will protect us all for years to come.
Our declining society continues to devalue human lives. The unborn, the elderly and the physically and mentally challenged are all being assessed as to their monetary value (cost vs benefit to society) rather than looking at them through our Creator’s eyes. All human beings have value.
This regulation allows us as medical providers the ability to opt out of services that promote the further devaluation of human lives.
As an adoptee, I am glad my birth-mother realized that abortion has long term consequences that she couldn’t live with and decided to put me up for adoption. My wife, kids and patient’s appreciate her decision too.
Thank you,
David Brunk, MMS, PA-C
Secretary Leavitt,
I’m not sure why physicians’ qualms about reproductive health deserve a right of refusal of care, when none of their other rights of conscience do. Suppose a Muslim physician is asked to care for someone who drinks alcohol and is suffering from cirrhosis of the liver–he isn’t given the right to refuse to treat that patient, even though that patient requires care because of actions that physician requires sinful.
If the answer is, “because this involves a human life”–then that answer, as determined by the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is wrong. As many as 70% of fertilized eggs do not successfully implant–and Plan B/HBC prevent ovulation, they do not prevent implantation from occurring. A life is NOT at stake in this case, it is merely the religious convictions of a provider.
So why can’t providers who religiously object to alcohol and tobacco refuse to provide care to people suffering from ailments related to use of those substances? Why can’t Jehovah’s Witnesses be hired as hematologists and refuse to run a blood bank? Why can’t Christian Scientists or Scientologists become physicians and then refuse to treat patients with modern medicine?
And if the question is, an “innocent” life being worth more than one that isn’t (presuming you consider the decision to have sex something that causes one to be somehow soiled), why aren’t convicted criminals who are suitably healthy and disease-free forced to donate their bone marrow and kidneys to children? It wouldn’t cause them permanent damage, or do more than “inconvenience” them for a few months. If we don’t force those people to surrender part of their lives and health for actions they voluntarily committed to put them in jail, why are women responsible for a fetus that might or might not ever become viable on its own? And which in theory could rather than being “an innocent” grow up to be Mengele, or Stalin?
Because, when they become doctors, they have a moral obligation to put their patient first. Nobody forced them to become doctors. Nobody forced them to choose specialties where they were caring for women’s reproductive health and general well-being. They are to put the patient’s need of care before their own moral judgement or repugnance. Doctors don’t get to deny treatment to criminals, they don’t get to ask people whether they’re good or not on the operating table. They can’t deny treatment to adulterers, or drug dealers, or liquor store owners.
People can’t join the army just to NOT press the button, when they’re told to.
Police can’t join the force in order to wink at people using drugs and say “morally, I don’t think you should be prosecuted so I conscientously object.”
Why do doctors deserve special rights?
We need federal regulations protecting conscience rights in health care now. Health professionals have a right to serve their patients without violating their deepest moral convictions. And women in need of prenatal care have a right to choose a health professional who will respect them and their unborn children. These are fundamental rights and must not be taken lightly or interfered with to satisfy a political agenda. “Choice” goes both ways. Thank you for considering this rule.
The definition in the proposed rule of “assist in the performance” may be interpreting this idea too broadly. Is there any clarity in the law on what that means? You need to carefully look that up, because a lot of people are not likely to accept your definition without support in law for it.
I asked this question before and it was not posted. It would appear that while I’m being told how physicians must have the right to follow their conscience, the moderator of this blog, apparently free of a conscience, is censoring dissenting commnets. Particularly ironic considering that some of the comments have suggested that this is a freedom of speech issue (which it isn’t, in any case).
I shall ask again. What if I were to become an automotive mechanic, got a job at a major service center, and then refused to work on engines that burn fossil fuel because of my firm environmental beliefs. Much as the physicians could still do work other than the procedures they are attempting to deny access to for religious reasons, I could still work on electrical or ethanol fueled vehicles.
Would those of you so up in arms over the right to conscience support it there? Could I expect a special bill protecting me from being fired even though I refused to do part of my job description?
Having failed to outlaw female reproductive rights, bills such as this attempt to circumvent the law by allowing people to ensure that women, especially in smaller, rural areas, have no access to what the law allows. This is not about the right of conscience, this is about establishing a de facto prohibition of the disputed procedures after failing to actually outlaw them.
Those commenting on the Hippocratic oath are woefully ignorant about certain medical realities. The negative risks of carrying a pregnancy to full term are much higher than an early term abortion. If you’re thinking of the “do no harm” part, an abortion is the path of least harm. Forcing a woman to carry the baby to term will do more harm. Forcing an unwanted child to be born to a family (or non family) that cannot care for it leads to greater long term harm.
As for the talk with regards to the rights of a small mass of vaguely differentiated tissue, 50% of pregnancies end early at that stage, typically before the pregnancy is even known, without human intervention in any case.
Physicians, pharmacists, and nurses who believe in an Invisible Supernatural Extraterrestrial (IES) should not be forced to practice against what they believe the IES or his/her burning bushes or talking snakes tell them how to practice medicine. Rationalists support the civil liberties of all persons to think or believe as they wish. No one should ever be compelled to believe something or engage in any activity that is in opposition to their personal values.
The real advantage of this proposed regulation for the entire public though is to provide us with an actual listing of who these medicine providing conscientious objectors are.
As a Rationalist, I want to know whether or not my medical providers are rational. When I require medical care, I want to be reassured that the persons treating me are professionals who do not seek a consult with an Invisible Supernatural Extraterrestrial.
GAMPAC firmly believes that everyone would be similarly advantaged by this proposed regulation.
As a physician I welcome the action protecting conscience clauses. When faced with issues, many of which do not have a clear course of action, it is the conscience which serves to guide further decisions because it is the conscience properly formed, that can and must uphold what is true and good. This is even truer in the face of adversity when the easiest thing to do is cave in under pressure. The conscience is the voice of reason telling us to “stick to your course” as it were. Take away the conscience clause and you take away the ability of persons to persist justly where injustice abounds!
Sincerely,
Richard P. Wurtz, MD
The vast majority of all abortions are elective procedures, or “choice” decisions made by the pregnant woman. They have “chosen” to end the life of a child developing within them. I don’t understand why pro-abortion advocates demand “choice” for the women but they want all medical providers to have “no choice” in participating in the act. Since usually there is no urgency in this decision women who want abortions can shop around for an abortion specialist. If I needed an oncologist or neurosurgeon I certainly would not want a physician who probably has little experience yet was forced to treat me. So I would be “Pro-choice” for medical providers on this one.
I find this proposed ruling to be mind-boggling abhorant. By refusing to fund clinics that require health professionals to provide contraception to women you are punishing the women who have no other options for health care. Ectopic pregnancies are LIFE-Threatening to the mother, there is no way to carry a fetus to term if it implants in a fallopian tube – your proposed ruling gives a pat on the back to the self-righteous physician who refuses to terminate a pregnancy that CANNOT result in a live birth and will also likely KILL the mother. How does this show a reverence for life?
Secretary Leavitt, for ensuring conscience protections for physicians. No member of the medical profession should be forced to do abortions if their conscience does not allow them to!
Secretary Leavitt, this rule is much needed, and much-appreciated. As a woman, it’s important for me to find healthcare providers who implement a moral framework in their practice. Women should be able to find OB/GYNs and other medical professionals who take seriously “First, do no harm.”
In recent years, a small number of activists have sought to impose their view on all by forcing healthcare professionals to act against their consciences to provide drugs and procedures that take, or can take, human life. Without this rule, medical professionals with integrity could be forced out of the profession, denying women treatment by healthcare professionals who act with integrity. Aynone who is truly in favor of choice would agree with this common-sense rule. It provides women a true choice in their healthcare.
Here we go again….NO ONE IS FORCING DOCTORS to perform abortions! There are however, people trying to force me to do what THEY think I should do with my own body! I have yet to see ANY conscience in the medical community when it comes to dealing with the REAL problems. Myself, as well as, many others CANNOT afford proper medical treatment, that includes ANY EMERGENCY care I may need. Why are there no doctors trying to push to resolve that MAJOR problem? Contraception and abortion are PERSONAL CHOICES! I have no choice but to get saddled with a ridiculously high medical bill or bills should I become seriously injured or ill.
LEAVE MY BODY ALONE! I am not trying to make anyone else use contraception nor am I forcing anyone to have or perform an abortion. So, why is it okay for someone else to FORCE their will upon me? My RIGHT to do with MY body as I see fit, TRUMPS this so called Physicians Conscience Act. Oh, just for the record, my CONSCIENCE tells me that it is WRONG to take away women’s rights to do as they see fit with their own bodies! I am also against enslaving women again. MY CONSCIENCE does not abide that! Now, do something to fix what is REALLY WRONG with the medical industry and leave MY BODY ALONE!
If a health care provider finds a procedure which is proven to be safe and sometimes necessary in certain situations “morally objectionable,” they are in the wrong field of work. Women will find ways to have abortions unsafely if they are denied a safe one, it’s been proven through history. You’re putting women in danger. I find your opinions to be morally objectionable.
Also, I find it rather hypocritical that zygotes are created and destroyed constantly when trying to perform invitro fertilization, but you still call abortion murder. So it’s ok to manipulate life when the end result is a pregnancy, even if many other potential lives are lost, but the termination of just one pregnancy is murder. Does that sound correct?
Thank you, Senator, for standing up for physicans- both
pro-life health providers and pro-abortion. No physican should be forced to participate in abortions, physician-assisted suicide, or other controversial practices.
As parents, we need the ability to choose for ourselves and our children, physicans who will treat life (treating us in ways that support our beliefs).
As patients, we desire the ability to choose pro-life health professionals. Thank you for your support.
I would like to understand how a woman has a “right to choose” to murder her own child in her womb, but my husband doesn’t have the right to choose NOT to assist her in this activity. This is not about a woman’s life or death, it is about her convenience. Why are her freedoms more important than someone else’s? Why is her CHOICE taking precedence? One of your respondents said they want to live in a secular society. I advise they move elsewhere, because the last time I checked, our religious freedom was guaranteed by the US Constitution. The 9th circuit recently found a physician at fault who didn’t want to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. He claimed it was against his religious beliefs. Even though he referred the couple for comparable care, the court sided with the couple, as if this doctor, in refusing to perform this procedure has put this woman’s health in danger.
A physician is not owned by the state. It should be their CHOICE whether or not to perform procedures which are opposed to their conscience, and they should not have to fear the loss of license or employment because they are doing what they think is right.
It is hard for me to believe that so many intelligent people seem to have no problem with the idea that physicians may soon be able to deny any persons medical help based on whther or not it “violates their conscience.” Some may see this as simply having to choose between pro-life or pro-choice, but it is only a small step from much wider, much more horrendous possibilites. If we start allowing the denial of this medical service because it is againt a physicians beliefs, how long before physicians start making decisions on who they treat based on their beliefs? Would we stand by when a physician denied medical treatment to a criminal because it would be against their conscience to prolong the life of a violent felon? Or a doctor who will only treat heterosexual patients because other sexual preferences are against his/her conscious? We cannot let laws or rules start being made that let anyone impose moral/religious beliefs on others lives. It may not seem like a bad thing at first, but it will open doors that will allow those in power to take away more and more rights until we are nothing more than slaves to the religious leaders.
Thank you for attempting to clarify this issue. Physicians swear to do no harm. The child in the womb should have that protection. When the minority attempts to overthrow the will of the majority, it is time for action. We cannot let them prevail. Again, I thank you.
I hope that this proposed rule (all 42 pages of it) will ensure that women can still obtain referrals from their doctors. Although I consider myself strongly pro-choice, I also feel that a pro-choice stance does mean that doctors can choose not to perform a particular procedure as long as they are clear and open about that from the beginning.
It is one thing to openly state that you will not perform a certain set or procedures, but it is another thing to use the right to refuse care to push a personal political agenda. I do not believe that the right of refusal is the same thing as the right to silence.
My concern is that this rule will not ensure that women have access to physicians able and willing to perform the procedure. I worry that doctors will refuse referrals too or that women in desperate circumstances and without the guidance of their doctor will take more risks than they need to.
As many others before me have said, NO ONE is FORCING a doctor to perform abortions, which many of this proposal’s endorsers seem to believe. I cannot honestly believe that anyone in their right mind would choose a profession where they do not believe in what they are doing. If you disagree with what you’re doing in a profession, find another one! Keep your morality out of my body and out of my future. I will have children someday, but I know that I will ONLY have them once I know I can provide for them! Until then, I will be RESPONSIBLE about my health and body, including my sexual health, so that I will be able to bring HEALTHY, HAPPY children into this world.
Any doctor who would put their own mental comfort before the physical well being of their patient is not a doctor I would want, nor is it a doctor who anyone should have to be attended by. Any doctor who would make that choice is unfit for the position.
As patients, we are told that we can trust our doctors — strangers! — with our lives. We can trust that they will do their best to keep us safe and healthy. Allowing doctors to pick and choose which people they will help, based on their own moral leanings, completely destroys that trust.
Thanking him for defending the choice of health care professionals NOT to violate their conscience, and let us hope that more medical personnel will be emboldened to do what they know is right.
We need more people like you in our federal government.
Just wanted to say thank you for standing up for the rights and consciences of our health care workers.
Thank you for upholding personal freedom in this country. Health care workers should not be forced to violate their moral principles. “Choice” is rather one-sided in our nation. A woman has a right to “choose” to kill her unborn baby, but a doctor has no “choice” when it comes to his decision not to kill. It seems the pro-choice faction is a bit disingenuous.
Thank you for defending the choice of health care professionals to NOT violate their conscience. Let us hope that more medical personnel will be emboldened to do what they know is right.
Thank you for for defending the choice of health care professionals NOT to violate their conscience.