Category: Contraception

Supreme Court of the Philippines

The Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012

Opinions supporting freedom of conscience

Introduction:

Supreme Court of the Philippines

In  April, 2014, the Protection of Conscience Project’s critique of the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 (RH Act) was confirmed by a ruling of the Supreme Court of the Philippines. 

With respect to the issue of freedom of conscience among health care workers and institutions, of the fifteen Supreme Court judges:

  • 11 held that the mandatory referral provision in the law was an unconstitutional violation of freedom of conscience;
  •  10 of the 11 also ruled that forcing an objecting health care worker to provide “complete and correct information” about contraception was a violation of freedom of conscience
    • The eleventh judge (Del  Castillo, J.) held that a requirement to provide complete and correct information was not unconstitutional, as long as it was not used to suppress the freedom of objecting health care workers to express professional or other opinions concerning contraception.
MAJORITY
Lucas P. Bersamin
Antonio T. Carpio
Jose Catral Mendoza
Diosdado M. Peralta
Jose Portugal Perez
Presbitero J. Velasco
Martin S. Villarama Jr.
Concurring opinions
Roberto A. Abad
Arturo D. Brion
Teresita J. Leonardo-de Castro
Concurring, dissenting in part
Mariano C.  Del Castillo (dissenting on providing information)
DISSENTING
Estala M. Perlas-Bernabe
Marvic Mario Victor F. Leonen
Bienvenido L. Reyes
Maria Lourdes P.A. Sereno

MAJORITY DECISION
Position of the Petitioners [P.60]
2. On Religious Accommodation and The Duty to Refer  [P.61]
Petitioners Imbong and Luat note that while the RH Law attempts to address religious sentiments by making provisions for a conscientious objector, the constitutional guarantee is nonetheless violated because the law also imposes upon the conscientious objector the duty to refer the patient seeking reproductive health services to another medical practitioner who would be able to provide for the patient’s needs. For the petitioners, this amounts to requiring the conscientious objector to cooperate with the very thing he refuses to do without violating his/her religious beliefs.190 . . . [Full text]

HHS preventive services mandate update

The Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, Georgia and the Catholic Diocese of Savannah have been granted a permanent injunction barring the federal government from enforcing the HHS birth control mandate against them. [Catholic Culture]  In Oklahoma, 200 Catholic employers filed a suit against the federal government seeking the same kind of protection.  The Catholic Benefits Association wants to offer health insurance that does not include coverage for contraceptives. [Associated Press]  On 25 March, the United States Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, two cases challenging the HHS mandate. [The Foundry]

Entrenching a ‘duty to do wrong’ in medicine

Canadian government funds project to suppress freedom of conscience and religion

 Sean Murphy*

A 25 year old woman who went to an Ottawa walk-in clinic for a birth control prescription was told that the physician offered only Natural Family Planning and did not prescribe or refer for contraceptives or related services. She was given a letter explaining that his practice reflected his “medical judgment” and “professional ethical concerns and religious values.” She obtained her prescription at another clinic about two minutes away and posted the physician’s letter on Facebook. The resulting crusade against the physician and two like-minded colleagues spilled into mainstream media and earned a blog posting by Professor Carolyn McLeod on Impact Ethics.

Professor McLeod objects to the physicians’ practice for three reasons. First: it implies – falsely, in her view – that there are medical reasons to prefer natural family planning to manufactured contraceptives. Second, she claims that refusing to refer for contraceptives and abortions violates a purported “right” of access to legal services. Third, she insists that the physician should have met the patient to explain himself, and then helped her to obtain contraception elsewhere by referral. Along the way, she criticizes Dr. Jeff Blackmer of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) for failing to denounce the idea that valid medical judgement could provide reasons to refuse to prescribe contraceptives. . .
Full Text

 

“NO MORE CHRISTIAN DOCTORS”

  Crusade against NFP-only physicians

“Religious beliefs should remain where they belong – in the private domain.”

 Sean Murphy*

Abstract

A 25 year old woman could not obtain a prescription for contraceptives at a clinic because the physician did not prescribe them for reasons of “medical judgment as well as professional ethical concerns and religious values.”  She obtained the prescription at a clinic two minutes away. A crusade was started against the physician and two colleagues with the same views. Crusaders argued that in a ‘secular’ state health care system, physicians should be forbidden to act on their moral or religious beliefs.

Physicians who refuse to prescribe contraceptives face a difficult challenge, since aggressive contraceptive promotion has left most people unaware of alternatives. Further, the social progress of women is widely attributed to contraceptives, so that failure to provide them risks an adverse reaction. Nonetheless, based on a respectful understanding of female fertility cycles and other factors, plausible reasons can be given to justify refusal to prescribe contraceptives and recommendation of Natural Family Planning.

The Supreme Court of Canada has acknowledged that secularists are believers, no less persons with religious beliefs. There is no legal warrant for the idea that a secular state must be purged of the expression of religious belief. The claim that a secular state or health care system is “faith-free” is radically false. Both religious belief and secularism can result in narrow dogmatism and intolerance, as demonstrated by the crusade against the physicians.

Since the practice of medicine is an inescapably moral enterprise, every decision concerning treatment is a moral decision. Since the practice of morality is a human enterprise, the secular public square is populated by people with many moral viewpoints. To discriminate against religious belief is a distortion of liberal principles. Moreover, if religious believers can be forced to do what they believe to be wrong, so can non-religious believers. This would establish a destructive and dangerous ‘duty to do what is wrong.’

It is essential to maintain the integrity of physicians and well-being of patients. After abortion was legalized, a difficult compromise emerged that safeguards both, while protecting the community against a purported ‘duty to do what is wrong.’ Nonetheless, some people are trying to entrench that duty in medical practice, moving from a purported duty to provide or facilitate abortion to a duty to kill or facilitate the killing of patients by euthanasia. It is unacceptable to compel people to commit or even to facilitate what they see as murder, and punish or penalize them if they refuse. It is equally unacceptable to insist that physicians must not act upon beliefs, because it is impossible; one cannot act morally without reference to beliefs. Such policies are inconsistent with the central place occupied by individual conscience and judgment in a liberal democracy.

Freedom of conscience can be adequately accommodated in a society characterized by a plurality of moral and political viewpoints if appropriate distinctions are made. The first of these is the distinction between the exercise of perfective freedom of conscience: pursuing an apparent good – and preservative freedom of conscience: refusing to participate in wrongdoing. The state can sometimes legitimately limit perfective freedom of conscience by preventing people from doing what they believe to be good, but it does not follow that it is equally free to suppress preservative freedom of conscience by forcing them to do what they believe to be wrong.

To force people to do something they believe to be wrong is always an assault on their personal dignity and essential humanity, and it always has negative implications for society. It is a policy fundamentally opposed to civic friendship, which grounds and sustains political community and provides the strongest motive for justice. It is inconsistent with the best traditions and aspirations of liberal democracy, since it instills attitudes more suited to totalitarian regimes than to the demands of responsible freedom. Even the strict approach taken to limiting other fundamental rights and freedoms is not sufficiently refined to be safely applied to limit freedom of conscience in its preservative form. Like the use of potentially deadly force, if the restriction of preservative freedom of conscience can be justified at all, it will only be as a last resort and only in the most exceptional circumstances.

That a young woman had to drive around the block to fill a birth control prescription does not meet this standard.

Part 1:  The Making of a Story

 

Physicians in Ottawa under attack for refusing to prescribe contraceptives

Physicians in Ottawa under attack for refusing to prescribe contraceptivesA 25 year old woman went to a walk-in clinic in Ottawa, Ontario, to get a prescription for birth control pills.  She was advised the physician on duty did not prescribe contraceptives, and was given a letter stating that for reasons of  “medical judgment as well as professional ethical concerns and religious values” he would assist patients only with Natural Family Planning.  She declined to return the next day to see another physician, and drove around the block to another clinic about two minutes away.  She posted the letter on Facebook, which resulted in a campaign against three Ottawa physicians who decline to provide contraceptives.

Outraged Facebookers called the physician a “jerk,” a “complete anachronism,” “disgusting,” incompetent, “unethical and unprofessional,” a “worthless piece of ____,” a “crummy doctor,” “an idiot,” and described him as – judgemental.

“Goofballs like this,” wrote one, “are the best walking arguments for the birth control they don’t believe in.”

“He should move to the states, or maybe Dubai, where he will be among his own kind.”

One Facebooker suggested that women should go to the clinic to make gratuitous requests for prescriptions, apparently for the purpose of fabricating complaints against the physician: “I think that women should start going in looking for prescriptions for The Pill. You know, just a top up till their family doctor can see them again.”