Representative Becky Nordgren of Alabama, is proposing a Health Care Right of Conscience Act in the state legislature. The bill is intended to protect all health care providers from being compelled to participate, directly or indirectly, in abortion, human cloning, human embryonic stem cell research, and sterilization if they object to the procedures for reasons of conscience. A health care provider must give an employer no less than 24 hours written notice of an objection. An exception is made in the case of a procedure necessary to save the life of a patient. Patricia Todd, a Representative apparently hostile to freedom of conscience for health care workers, asked “[W]hy are you in the health care profession if you don’t want to provide health care?” adding that there had been no attempts to regulate male impotence drugs or prostate exams. [Anniston Star]
Category: United States
American Civil Liberties Union sues U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference
A lawsuit has been filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), alleging that the health care directives of the Conference were responsible for the failure of a Catholic hospital to properly treat a woman who was miscarrying a pregnancy at 18 weeks gestation. The incident subject of the lawsuit occurred in December, 2010 in Muskegon, Michigan. The ACLU alleges that Tamesha Means was sent home twice by Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon without appropriate medical intervention, and received treatment only when she returned a third time and actually went into labour. The suit also names Catholic Health Ministries Chairman Stanley Urban, and former chairpersons Robert Ladenburger and Mary Mollison as defendants. They are named as individuals because Catholic Health Ministries (CHM) has status under Catholic Canon Law as a “public juridic person” [Health Progress, March/April 2005] but has never been incorporated under the laws of Michigan or the United States. The ACLU contends that CHM was responsible for the enforcement of the USCCB directives.
Neither the hospital nor the treating physicians are named in the suit. As a result, the claim is not for medical malpractice or medical negligence by the physicians or hospital, but for negligence by the USCCB. However, the hospital and treating physicians would be civilly liable for their actions regardless of USCCB directives, and their competence and clinical judgment would surely be central issues in evaluating what took place. If they were not negligent, it is difficult to see how the USCCB or CHM could be held to be negligent.
The substance of the complaint was released to the media before the USCCB was served. In a response to media enquiries, the president of the USCCB insisted that the lawsuit was “baseless” and “misguided.” John Haas, President of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, stated that the ACLU was selectively reading the directives, and that the suit was a means to advance a partisan cause, not “to obtain redress (for Means).”
“If they were concerned about a redress of grievances for this woman and medical malpractice,” he said, the suit should have been filed in a Michigan court naming the hospital and its staff as defendants. He also pointed out the at the directives would have permitted the induction of labour in the circumstances alleged in the complaint, and likened the suit against the USCCB as suing the American Medical Association because a physician failed to follow its guidelines. [NCR]
U.S. Supreme Court to hear appeal on federal birth control mandate
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases concerning the controversial federal regulation that compels businesses employing more than 50 people to provide health insurance for birth control and surgical sterilization, even if the business owners object to doing so for reasons of conscience. In one case (Hobby Lobby) the lower court supported the plaintiff’s position; in the other (Conestoga Wood Specialties) the lower court supported the federal government. [Washington Post]
Does medical education make physicians susceptible to participating in torture?
- Craig Klugman* | . . . Medical education does not provide courses in moral courage, defying authority, or turning against the tide of one’s peers. In fact, medical education encourages group think, keeping your head down and knowing your place in the hierarchy, and seeking out the approval of your peers. . .
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U.S. Catholic bishops reaffirm opposition to forced payment for birth control
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has unanimously approved a statement reiterating the opposition of the Catholic episcopate to the federal regulation that forces objecting business owners to provide insurance coverage for birth control and surgical sterilization.