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Bush Administration Proposes Additional Protections for Healthcare Freedom of Conscience
By Denise Burke | July 15, 2008
On Monday, the Bush administration began circulating a proposed policy that would require all recipients of federal money under any program run by the Department of Health and Human Services to certify that they will not discriminate against healthcare providers who object to participating in abortions.
Although the announcement of this draft policy was met with predictable consternation from abortion advocacy groups, this policy simply provides an oversight mechanism to enforce more than a dozen existing (and many long-standing) federal protections for healthcare freedom of conscience.
For example, on June 19, 1973 (in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade), Congress passed, The Church Amendment, the first federal legislation protecting the right of healthcare providers to decline to participate in abortions. Named after its sponsor, Senator Frank Church, it provides that an individual may not be forced to participate in abortions over moral or ethical objections.
More recently, the Hyde-Weldon Amendment, part of the Fiscal Year 2005 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor/HHS/ED) Appropriations bill, provides that no federal, state, or local government agency or program that receives federal health and human services funds may discriminate against a health care provider if the provider refuses to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.
Moreover, the laws of 47 states also provide similar protections for individual healthcare providers. Only Alabama, New Hampshire, and Vermont do not supplement federal freedom of conscience protections.
In response to the proposed policy, abortion advocacy groups engaged in a classic attempt at misdirection, arguing that the policy would negatively impact women’s access to contraceptives.
However, a careful reading of both the draft policy and the multitude of existing federal laws protecting healthcare freedom of conscience clearly shows that this policy is directed at abortions, both surgical and chemical (e.g. those induced using RU-486).
The reasons for this attempted misdirection are obvious: Abortion supporters realize that the majority of Americans do not support taxpayer funding of elective abortions. Americans, by a large margin, also support the right of individuals to refuse to participate in procedures (like abortion) that violate an individual’s conscience, morals, or ethics. So, rather engaging in a meaningful and honest discussion of the issues, abortion supporters are feverishly trying to shift the debate to one in which they feel more confident of acquiring some modicum of public support.
This step by the Bush Administration is necessary to ensure that existing federal law is enforced and to protect the freedom of conscience of all Americans.
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Topics: Abortion, Contraception, ROC, RU-486 |
July 15th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
[...] Burke offers more insights into the proposed rule in this post on the Americans United for Life Blog. She begins: “On Monday, the Bush administration began circulating a proposed policy that [...]