Service, not Servitude
thejournal.ie
MEMBERS OF THE Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have expressed concerns over the roll-out of services to terminate pregnancies in Ireland.
The issues were raised at an extraordinary general meeting of the institute – which is the national training body for obstetricians and gynaecologists in Ireland – this evening . . .[Full text]
The Irish Times
The first week of abortion services in Ireland will not go down as model of good organisation, clear communication and open disclosure.
The very opposite: eight days into the new regime, health professionals are still operating with insufficient information and guidance, and little training. The rest of us have been kept in the dark about what services are available, and where. . . . [Full text]
The Times
In the Germany of Otto von Bismarck, they called it the Kulturkampf, which means cultural struggle. In a narrow sense it referred to the battle between the German state and the Catholic church over schools and ecclesiastical appointments, but more generally to efforts to reduce the influence of Catholicism in German life. The Lutheran church, being state-run, was not deemed a threat to Bismarck’s vision for a newly unified Germany.
The Irish state has not quite got around to seeking control over who gets to become a bishop, but church-run schools are in its sights, and ministers seem determined to reduce the influence of Catholicism in Irish life to a minimum. . . [Full text]
Hawaii’s new medically-assisted suicide law has gone into effect, but few doctors and pharmacies are willing to prescribe and dispense the life-ending medications.
Hawaii Pacific Health and The Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu said their pharmacies will not fill the prescriptions and hospitalized patients will not be able to take the lethal drugs on their campuses, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Tuesday. . . [Full text]
The increasingly aggressive discrimination in recent years against religious and pro-life healthcare professionals and students[1] parallels a concentrated effort by abortion proponents to undermine the rationale for conscience protections in healthcare. Desperate abortion advocates apparently have concluded that the way to counter the medical community’s resistance to abortion is through coercion.
Coercion appeals to some activists because coercion is much quicker than persuasion in effecting change. If abortion activists can eliminate conscience protections, then health professionals can be forced to participate in abortion or else sacrifice their careers. .
Affordable Care Act architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and University of Pennsylvania professor Ronit Stahl lay the foundation for getting rid of healthcare conscience protections, in a New England Journal of Medicine opinion piece entitled, “Physicians, Not Conscripts — Conscientious Objection in Health Care.”[2]
Their message is simple: Choice is a one-way street. Patients get to choose; doctors don’t—at least not after they enter the medical profession.
Emanuel and Stahl attempt to establish this radical principle by postulating a sharp distinction between conscience accommodations for military draftees and conscience accommodations for physicians.
Emanuel and Stahl write,
Although this [conscience healthcare protection] legislation ostensibly mimics that of military conscientious objection, it diverges considerably. Viewing conscientious objection in health care as analogous to conscientious objection to war mistakes choice for conscription, misconstrues the role of personal values in professional contexts, substitutes cost-free choices for penalized decisions, and cedes professional ethics to political decisions.”[3]
In the United States, a pacifist opposed to the military draft can receive a conscientious exemption from combat duty, even during a time of war when every other able-bodied citizen his age is expected to fight to defend the national interest. The cost to the country is high if counted in terms of fewer soldiers available for active duty.
Yet the authors would countenance no such rights, no such accommodation of cost, to a pro-life physician who cannot on the basis of conscience end the life of a developing baby in an elective abortion. While permitting the pacifist draftee a conscientious objection to killing, the authors contend, government must deny the same objection by a health professional.
Why? According to Emmanuel and Stahl, the reason is that physicians choose their professions, whereas draftees do not choose to join the military. . .[Full text]