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CCWA Applauds HHS for Upholding Healthcare Providers’ Rights

NEWS RELEASE
15 July, 2008

WASHINGTON – – According to The New York Times, the Bush administration plans to propose regulations to comply with federal laws to protect patients and healthcare professionals from being forced to provide controversial drugs and procedures such as abortion. The newspaper reports that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has drafted regulations “to ensure that federal money does not ‘support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.'” Recipients of federal health programs (such as hospitals and clinics) would have to certify that they will not refuse to hire healthcare providers who object to abortion or abortifacients (drugs or devices that can cause an early abortion). The regulation defines abortion as “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

“For over 35 years, federal laws have protected the conscientious rights of healthcare professionals, but they were not fully implemented for lack of thorough regulations to enforce them,” stated Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America (CWA). “As more controversial drugs and procedures get introduced, and additional pressure is put on healthcare providers to either compromise their moral commitments or lose their jobs, the need has become greater for regulations to catch up with the law.”

“As patients, we rely on healthcare professionals to provide ethical advice and treatments. Patients will lose trust in the healthcare field if professionals are gagged from giving ethical and well-informed advice or forced to commit procedures or provide drugs that take an innocent life. If healthcare professionals are denied the right to live out their moral beliefs, patients will suffer the consequences.” Abortion proponents reportedly oppose the proposed regulations. “Clearly, abortion advocates do not believe in the ‘right to choose’ if the choice is not to participate in abortion or provide drugs that can take the life of a human being. The regulation applies to abortion, which is clearly defined as an action that terminates a human life before or after implantation. When abortion advocates claim this regulation would discourage providing ‘contraception’ it reveals that their definition of ‘contraception’ includes drugs that would cause abortion.”

Contact: Natalie Bell, Concerned Women for America, 202-488-7000 ext. 126 Concerned Women for America is the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.

CMA physicians call on HHS to protect patients with regulations upholding healthcare professionals’ rights

NEWS RELEASE
July 15, 2008
For Immediate Release

Christian Medical Association

Washington, D.C.–July 15, 2008– Responding to a story published this morning by the New York Times , physicians of the Christian Medical Association called on Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael O. Leavitt to publish regulations in accord with federal laws protecting patients and healthcare professionals in decisions relating to controversial procedures and prescriptions. The New York Times indicated that the Department has drafted regulations “to ensure that federal money does not ‘support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.'”

“It’s high time that the will of the people, as expressed over the past 35 years through laws passed by Congress, finally be translated into practical healthcare regulations,” noted Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the 13,000-member faith-based professional organization of doctors, in a letter today to the Secretary. “Americans on all sides of controversial issues such as abortion, reproductive technologies and assisted suicide can appreciate the need to protect everyone’s First Amendment rights of free speech and religious exercise. That means that healthcare professionals must be free to follow their individual conscientious convictions on these life-and-death matters. The CMA letter also noted, “An informal survey of Christian Medical Association members found that over 41 percent of respondents had been “pressured to compromise Biblical or ethical convictions.”

Anecdotal accounts suggest that few persecuted healthcare professionals actually know their conscience rights and that they typically simply submit to pressure by resigning. Unless pro-life professionals are equipped to know and apply their conscience rights, they actually stand at risk of being weeded out from the profession altogether .

Dr. Gene Rudd, Executive Vice President of the CMA, noted, “From the 1973 Church Amendment to the more recent Hyde-Weldon Amendment, Congress has recognized the importance of protecting patients and their healthcare professionals from political pressures on these vital issues.”Patients are protected when physicians follow objective ethical codes, such as those expressed in the Hippocratic Oath and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. We recognize that some individuals choose to refuse to follow these principles, and under current law, that is their choice. “The regulations reportedly under consideration at Health and Human Services apparently would simply protect the right for all healthcare professionals to make professional judgments based on moral convictions and ethical standards. Protecting this right also protects patients who choose their physicians based on life-affirming values.”

Contact: Becky Gerber Telephone: 888-231-2637 E-mail: becky.gerber@cmda.org The Christian Medical Association is equipped with Ku Band Digital Uplink satellite and ISDN lines.

Vivisectionist recalls his day of reckoning

Doctor put conscience on hold until war atrocity confession time came

The Japan Times

Jun Hongo

Donning the crisp, Imperial Japanese Army khakis gave Ken Yuasa a sense of power, as a superior being on a mission to liberate China from Western colonialism.

“The uniform made me feel incredibly sharp. Once I put it on, I was convinced Japan would triumph,” recalled the wartime surgeon, who was deployed to Changzhi (then Luan) in Shanxi Province in February 1942.

His fervor, and the nationalist indoctrination of his schooling, quickly subordinated any sense of conscience. By his second month at Luan’s army hospital, Yuasa was aggressively performing vivisections on live Chinese prisoners, and diverting dysentery and typhoid bacillus to Japanese troops for use in biological warfare.

“I was in denial of the things I did in Luan until the war was over. It was because I had no sense of remorse while I was doing it,” Yuasa, 90, told The Japan Times in a recent interview.

“We believed that the orders from the top were absolute. We performed the vivisections as ordered. We erased any sense of culpability by doing so, even though what we did was horrendous.” [Full text]

Dawson’s licence revoked for sexual misconduct

Physician who refused birth control to unmarried had sex with patient

Sean Murphy*

On 9 May, 2005, the Discipline Committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario revoked Dr. Dawson’s registration as a physician for having engaged in the sexual abuse of a married female patient. He was ordered to appear before a panel to be reprimanded and to pay costs to the College in the amount of $2,500.00. A summary of the judgement is available on the College website. [Full text]

Planned Parenthood and “Anti-Choice” Rhetoric

News Release

Protection of Conscience Project

Planned Parenthood Alberta is recycling the accusation that physicians who object to abortion may “scare” patients with “misinformation” or “impose their moral beliefs.” This smear may be unfairly applied to conscientious objectors who follow the guidelines of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA).

The CMA advises physicians to inform a patient when their personal morality would influence their recommendations or practice, and to advise patients of their objections to abortion. The CPSA expects physicians to provide information to patients seeking abortion so that they can “make informed decisions on all available options for their pregnancies, including termination.”

On the other hand, objecting physicians can hardly be expected to present morally controversial procedures as morally uncontroversial, or in such a way as to indicate that they approve of them or are indifferent to them. Moreover, the information they reasonably believe necessary to permit the patient to make a truly “informed decision” may be more comprehensive or in other respects different from what Planned Parenthood is accustomed to provide its clients.

An interest group like Planned Parenthood might well stigmatize such discussion as ‘moralizing’ and providing ‘misinformation’. Partisan polemics of this sort do not provide a basis for sound policy making.

Planned Parenthood Alberta is compiling a list of what it calls “anti-choice doctors.” If it is desirable to help patients find physicians who share their outlook on moral issues, it would be preferable for doctors to identify themselves, perhaps through the College of Physicians and Surgeons or professional associations.

But if Planned Parenthood persists in its plan to identify “anti-choice doctors”, it should include in its list the names of physicians who believe that their colleagues should be forced to provide or facilitate morally controversial procedures.