Service, not Servitude
The Arizona House of Representatives has passed bill HB2625 to amend state legislation to provide a religious exemption to the state’s own mandate for insurance coverage for contraception. The amendment will also revoke the narrow definition of “religious employer” that was copied in the federal regulation at the centre of a controversy about religious freedom in the United States.
By a vote of 51-48, the United States Senate rejected an amendment in the form of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011, which Senator Roy Blunt had moved to have appended to a bill. Three Democratic senators voted in favour of the amendment.[News release][CNN] In response to the vote, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said that the bishops “will not rest until the protection of conscience rights is restored and the First Amendment is returned to its place of respect in the Bill of Rights.” [USCCB news release]
Two Catholic midwives who brought suit against National Health Services Greater Glasgow and Clyde have lost the case in the Court of Session. The judge ruled that midwives, while expected to supervise and direct staff providing abortions, were not required to directly participate in the procedure, and were “sufficiently removed” from the procedures that their beliefs had been appropriately accommodated. Nonetheless, the judge did acknowledge that they were causally connected, but ruled that the protection of conscience clause in the Abortion Act (1967) must be interpreted to refer only to direct participation.
NEWS RELEASE
29 February 2012, 17:15
The two Glasgow midwives at the centre of today’s court judgment on conscientious objection to abortion have made the following statement:
Miss Mary Doogan said:
“Connie [Wood] and I are both very disappointed and greatly saddened by today’s verdict.
“For most of our 20-plus years of employment as midwifery sisters at the Southern General Hospital we have been proud to be associated with a maternity unit in which the right of all midwifery staff to freedom of conscience has been acknowledged, protected and upheld with no detrimental outcome to any mother whatsoever.
“Neither Connie nor I stand in judgement of any woman who chooses to terminate her pregnancy for whatever reasons. We are more than aware of the difficult choices that some expectant mothers may be faced with in a crisis pregnancy.
“However, in holding to the view that life should be protected from conception to natural death, neither do we wish to be judged for exercising what is our legal right to refuse to participate in the process of medical termination of pregnancy.
“We wish now to take some time to consider all options that are available to us (including appeal) before making any further comment.”
Notes for editors:
Since both women remain employees of the health board they are not in a position to make further comment or give interviews.
The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has supported the midwives in bringing their case, underwriting their legal costs, and will now be considering their further legal options with them. Please see SPUC’s release of earlier today and of 17 January.SPUC’s communications department can be contacted on:
The Prosblogion
. . . Our moral intuitions while being a genuine source of moral knowledge are often distorted by the desire to find excuses for our own faults or, more excusably, those of
friends. Moral intuitions should not be glorified with the name “conscience”. . .
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