The Supreme Court of the Philippines has resumed a hearing into the constitutionality of the controversial Reproductive Health law (the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012) . The operation of the law was suspended by the Court pending the outcome of litigation against it. Luisito Liban, a lawyer representing some of those opposed to the bill, told the court that his clients were “speaking on behalf of true Catholics” who do not use contraceptives. He also criticized the section of the law that requires objecting physicians to refer patients for morally contested services. [GMA (Philippines); ABS-CBN News (Philippines)]
Month: July 2013
Seattle Times issues warning: Catholic hospitals won’t provide assisted suicide, abortion
An editorial in the Seattle Times has expressed support for the decision of Jay Inslee of Washington State to direct the state health department to update its rules about health care provider ownership, facilities and services. The problem, in the Times view, is that about 1/3 of the state’s hospital beds are now in Catholic institutions, which refuse to provide abortion or assisted suicide, and that Catholic influence in the state is increasing. By the year’s end, according to the editorial, Catholic facilities may control half the hospital beds. “Concerns center on the possibility of patients losing access or referrals to the full range of legal reproductive and end-of-life services banned by religious doctrine.”
Abortion & Conscience
- Michael Sean Winters* | . . . We are called to conform ourselves to the moral law and so form our consciences that this conformity is understood, properly, as a genuine liberation, a freeing of one’s capacity to choose so that we choose the good. In short, our exercise of conscience is not just a legal claim of immunity. . .
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Philippines Supreme Court extends suspension of RH Act
Following oral arguments about the controversial Reproductive
Health (RH) Law, the Philippines Supreme Court has indefinitely extended its order to suspend the implementation of the law. [Manila Times]
New Zealand abortion activists complain about physician freedom of conscience
Dr. Joseph Lee, a physician in Blenheim, New Zealand, has been criticized by abortion activists because he refused to prescribe contraceptives for a 23 year old patient. Dr. Lee practises at the Wairau Community Clinic. A pamphlet in the reception area advises patients that some of the clinic’s physicians will not prescribe contraceptives, and staff attempt to direct patients accordingly. The clinic leader may consider installing a sign to minimize further conflicts.
Dr. Lee identifies himself as a Catholic, but is reported to have said that he would be willing to prescribe the birth control pill to a woman who was spacing children or had had at least four children. That is not consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church on the subject, and it is an unusual position among health care workers who object to providing contraception.
The Abortion Law Reform Association NZ (ALRANZ) wants the General Medical Council to force objecting physicians to refer patients or otherwise assist them to obtain morally contested services. The president of ALRANZ, Dr. Morgan Healey, claims that a High Court decision in 2010 has made the question of referral legally ambiguous. [New Zealand Herald]
However, Justice Alan MacKenzie of the High Court in Wellington, New Zealand,unambiguously ruled that New Zealand’s Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act protected objecting physicians, and that the General Medical Council could not force them to refer abortion. All that is required of a physician who objects to abortion is to decline to begin the process and inform his patient that she may obtain the procedure from another practitioner. The protection of conscience provision states that objecting health care workers are not obliged “To fit or assist in the fitting, or supply or administer or assist in the supply or administering, of any contraceptive, or to offer or give any advice relating to contraception.” The ruling was the result of litigation by the New Zealand Health Professionals Alliance, which, earlier this year established a website to support freedom of conscience for health care workers.