Tag Archives: Conscience Protection

How government control of medicine leads to violations of conscience

Story here from the leftist Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Deep within the massive health-care overhaul legislation, a few little-noticed provisions have quietly reignited one of the bitterest debates in medicine: how to balance the right of doctors, nurses and other workers to refuse to provide services on moral or religious grounds with the right of patients to get care.

[…]The debate has focused attention on President Obama’s plan to rescind a federal regulation put into effect by the previous administration to protect workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable. Soon after taking office, Obama announced he would lift the rule, arguing it could create obstacles to abortion and other reproductive health services. But a final decision about whether to kill, keep or replace the rule with a compromise has been pending as the debate over the health law raged. The outcome is being closely watched as a bellwether of how the administration will handle a possible thicket of conflicts under the health legislation.

“The act is thousands of pages of new government power, decision-making and funding,” said Matthew S. Bowman of the Alliance Defense Fund, which represents workers who object on religious grounds to being required to provide some forms of health care. “Any government power over health care can be exercised in a way that discriminates against pro-life health providers, especially when officials already support abortion and oppose enforcement of conscience laws.”

And more:

Bowman and others point to Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo as an example of what they fear could become increasingly common as the government becomes much more deeply entwined with health care. Cenzon-DeCarlo was working at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York last year when the nurse was stunned to learn that she had been assigned to help abort a 22-week-old fetus. A devout Catholic, Cenzon-DeCarlo thought she had a long-standing agreement with the hospital that let her avoid abortions. But this time, despite her pleas, Cenzon-DeCarlo’s bosses insisted.

“It felt like a horror film unfolding,” Cenzon-DeCarlo said. “It was devastating. I have suffered intense emotional pain. I’ve had nightmares. . . . I felt violated and betrayed.”

Cenzon-DeCarlo, who filed state and federal lawsuits against Mount Sinai, is the only health-care worker who has filed a complaint under the previous administration’s rule, which remains in effect. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is investigating, but officials would not comment on the case. The hospital also declined to comment.

Government is necessarily secular, and it is typically run by people who are born rich and educated at expensive schools. It causes them to think they are better than other people. They become extremely disdainful of the moral law, and the Judeo-Christian worldview that supports it – because they view the moral law (and the Constitution, etc.) as a  antiquated brake on their pursuit of happiness in this life. The desire for happiness now causes them to believe in anything that will push the demands of the moral law off.

And their personal views inform their political views. Those on the left favor policies that push moral rules aside, and sometimes even the people who believe moral rules – like pro-life doctors. The problem is that dismissing the moral law only works when you have a rich grandmother to bail you out. That’s why we need to elect more people like Michele Bachmann, who are self-made and had to work for a living, and who have raised their own children. People who don’t have contempt for the beliefs and values of ordinary people.

Do Democrats like Martha Coakley believe in religious liberty?

Check out this story from the Boston Herald.

Excerpt:

Ken Pittman: Right, if you are a Catholic, and believe what the Pope teaches that any form of birth control is a sin. Ah you don’t want to do that.

Martha Coakley: No, we have a separation of church and state Ken, lets be clear.

Ken Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.

Martha Coakley: The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.

At another point in the interview she says, “if people believe that they don’t want to provide services that are required under the law and under Roe v. Wade, that they can individually decide to not follow the law, the answer is no.”

Listen to the audio clip:

The full interview is here on Ken Pittman’s site.

I find her willingness to squash the religious beliefs of individuals with her secular leftist support for abortion very disturbing. Why should she have the right to force her anti-Christian view on me? And why does she label herself as a Roman Catholic? She trying to use the power of the state to force pro-lifers to commit murder. How is that consistent with Roman Catholicism? (Or evangelical Protestant Christianity?)

NYT writer worried that vegetables – not unborn children – feel pain

Story here in the New York Times. (H/T Weasel Zippers via ECM)

Excerpt:

But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.

Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl… It’s a small daily tragedy that we animals must kill to stay alive. Plants are the ethical autotrophs here, the ones that wrest their meals from the sun. Don’t expect them to boast: they’re too busy fighting to survive.

So, plants are people, too, and we shouldn’t do violence to them by eating them. Interesting… But you know who doesn’t deserve protection from violence, according to the secular left? Unborn children, that’s who. I don’t see them mentioned in this NYT article.

In fact, the left wants to use government power to stop conscience rights for pro-life doctors, and even the public expression of pro-life convictions. (H/T Lex Communis)

Don’t forget all the pro-life clubs that are banned across Canada. But maybe plants have a right to life, because maybe they feel pain.

People on the secular left like recreational sex, but they don’t like having unexpected mouths to feed. They want the pleasure of sex, but not the work of taking care of innocent little babies. To feel less guilty about killing babies, they have to invent a new morality that blesses something else they want to do as morally good, like recycling, animal rights activism or vegetarianism. It’s idolatry – inventing a god of your own that you can appease just by doing anything you want.