Category: Abortion

Christian Medical Association and Freedom2Care Applaud Administration’s Actions to Protect Conscience in Healthcare

News Release

Christian Medical Association

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2017 — Today the nation’s largest association of Christian health professionals, the 18,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA, Christian Medical Association www.cmda.org) applauded the administration’s actions to restore conscience freedoms in healthcare. The administration took action concerning the Obamacare contraceptives mandate, insurance premiums used to pay for abortions, and regarding government respect for religious freedom.

“We are thankful to see these vital conscience freedoms restored in healthcare,” noted CMA Senior Vice President Gene Rudd, MD, and Ob-Gyn physician. “For millennia, medical ethics have provided for conscientious opposition to abortion by physicians who took up the practice of medicine as a healing art never to be used for the destruction of human life. And until recently, our government reinforced those ethical principles with conscience protections. We are heartened to see our government heading back in the direction of these vital freedoms that protect patients, medicine and freedom in our country.”

Jonathan Imbody, director of Freedom2Care (www.Freedom2Care.org), which is affiliated with CMA said, “As Americans who have inherited a nation founded upon freedom of faith, conscience and speech, we can agree that the government must never force individuals to violate their deepest held beliefs on vital and extremely controversial issues such as abortion. When our leaders forget these principles, and take to forcing nuns to participate in matters they consider wholly immoral, the American people realize that our fundamental freedoms are in jeopardy. If the government can take away the rights of one group, then no one is safe from government coercion.

“These actions today by the administration are an important step back in the direction of freedom and respect for one another, and we look forward to more actions in the future, including restoration of the conscience rule for health professionals that President Obama gutted.”

Contact: Margie Shealy, Christian Medical Association, 423-341-4254

Trump Administration Rolls Back ACA Contraceptive Coverage Rule

Several organizations plan to sue over the change

Medpage Today

Joyce Frieden

WASHINGTON — Medical groups expressed disappointment in rules issued Friday by the Trump administration that rollback contraceptive coverage requirements put in place by the Obama administration.

The new rules were issued as “interim final” regulations, meaning that they will be implemented immediately. The rules allow employers to refuse to cover contraceptives for any moral or religious reason. It also no longer requires employers to allow their insurers or third-party administrators to provide separate coverage, instead calling that arrangement an “optional” accommodation.

Under the Affordable Care Act, employers were required to cover all forms of contraception with no co-pay. Certain religiously affiliated employers, such as churches or religious affiliated hospitals or universities, were exempted from this rule; however, once they signed paperwork stating that they did not want to provide coverage, the employer’s insurer or third-party administrator then had to provide that same coverage, with no co-pay, to employees who needed it. . .[Full text]

 

Trump Administration Issues Rules Protecting the Conscience Rights of All Americans

News Release

For immediate release

United States Department of Health and Human Services

The Departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Labor are announcing two companion interim final rules that provide conscience protections to Americans who have a religious or moral objection to paying for health insurance that covers contraceptive/abortifacient services. Obamacare-compliant health insurance plans are required to cover “preventive services,” a term defined through regulation. Under the existing regulatory requirements created by the previous administration, employers, unless they qualify for an exemption, must offer health insurance that covers all FDA-approved contraception, which includes medications and devices that may act as abortifacients as well sterilization procedures.

Under the first of two companion rules released today, entities that have sincerely held religious beliefs against providing such services would no longer be required to do so. The second rule applies the same protections to organizations and small businesses that have objections on the basis of moral conviction which is not based in any particular religious belief.

In May, President Trump issued an “Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty” in which the President directed the Secretaries of Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury to consider amending existing regulations relative to Obamacare’s preventive-care mandate in order to address conscience-based objections.

Key Facts about today’s interim final rules:

  • The regulations exempt entities only from providing an otherwise mandated item to which they object on the basis of their religious beliefs or moral conviction.
  • The regulation leaves in place preventive services coverage guidelines where no religious or moral objection exists – meaning that out of millions of employers in the U.S., these exemptions may impact only about 200 entities, the number that that filed lawsuits based on religious or moral objections.
    • These rules will not affect over 99.9% of the 165 million women in the United States.
  • Current law itself already exempts over 25 million people from the preventive-care mandate because they are insured through an entity that has a health insurance plan that existed prior to the Obamacare statute.
  • The regulations leave in place government programs that provide free or subsidized contraceptive coverage to low income women, such as through community health centers.
  • These regulations do not ban any drugs or devices.
  • The mandate as defined by the previous administration suffered defeats in court after court, including the Supreme Court, which ruled that the government cannot punish business owners for their faith.

The IFR can be found here:

https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2017-21852

https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2017-21851

To find a fact sheet on the IFRs, visit:  Religious and Moral Exemptions and Accommodations for Coverage of Certain Preventive Services Under the Affordable Care Act

Contact: HHS Press Office
202-690-6343
media@hhs.gov

 

Health professionals’ pledge rejects any form of participation in or condoning torture

Sean Murphy*

Physicians for Human Rights is sponsoring a Health Professionals’ Pledge Against Torture that includes statements that signatories will never “participate or condone” torture and support colleagues who “resist orders to torture or inflict harm.”  It also commits signatories to insist that their professional associations support those facing pressure “to participate or condone torture and ill-treatment.”

What is noteworthy is that the pledge is not limited to simply refusing to torture someone, but is a pledge against participation (which would include forms of facilitation like referral) and against condoning the practice.

Replace “torture” with commonly morally contested procedures and it becomes obvious that the ethical position taken by Physicians for Human Rights vis-à-vis torture is identical to the position of many health care professionals who object to practices like euthanasia or abortion for reasons of conscience.

Bolivia enacts new abortion law with limited conscience clause

Sean Murphy*

A new abortion law has been enacted in Bolivia as part of the revision of the country’s Penal Code.  Section 153 of the Penal Code now permits abortion of any girl under the age of 20 for any reason and at any point in gestation, when pregnancy results from rape, incest or involuntary artificial reproduction.  Abortion is also allowed at any point in gestation in the case of present or future risk to the life or “overall health” of a woman, and (when pregnancy is under 8 weeks gestation) the woman is a student or has the care of a disabled relative.

The protection of conscience provision prohibits “the national health system” from asserting conscientious objection and insists that conscientious objection is limited to individual medical personnel “directly involved in the accomplishment” of the procedure, and must be stated in advance.  “The national health system” is not defined in the law.  It would appear from this that private or denominational health facilities (if they exist and are legally part of the national health system) cannot establish policies prohibiting abortion.

The fact that abortion is permitted as an exception to a general prohibition should mean that medical personnel or institutions of the opinion that a women does not qualify for an abortion under one of the legal criterion (such as risk to “overall health”) cannot be compelled to participate.  This would not constitute conscientious objection and could not be stated in advance.