Little Sisters of the Poor have filed appeal in Denver, Colorado against the HHS Mandate. Catholic Notre Dame University in Indiana has been denied injunctive relief, apparently because it had already agreed to comply with the mandate. The Becket Fund reports 95 lawsuits filed against the federal government regulation, with over 300 plaintiffs: 47 by for-profit corporations, 46 by non-profit corporations, and two class action lawsuits. Of the rulings so far, 33 injunctions have been granted to for-profit corporations (six denied) and 19 have been granted to non-profit corporations (one denied).
“NO MORE CHRISTIAN DOCTORS”
Crusade against NFP-only physicians
“Religious beliefs should remain where they belong – in the private domain.”
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.
Liberal Party of Canada adopts pro-euthanasia/assisted suicide policy
Canada’s Liberal Party, meeting at a policy convention in Montreal, Quebec, has overwhelmingly adopted a policy resolution favouring the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide. However, the policy is not binding on the party leader, Justin Trudeau, so it is not certain that it will be included in his official platform in the next Canadian federal election. The policy resolution calls for a change in the law after public consultation. [National Post]
Complicity after the fact
Moral blindness becomes a virtue and necessity
US scientists were “accomplices after the fact” in Japanese doctors’ war crimes
All of contemporary bioethics springs from the Nuremberg Doctors Trial in 1947. Seven Nazi doctors and officials were hanged and nine received severe prison sentences for performing experiments on an estimated 25,000 prisoners in concentration camps without their consent. Only about 1,200 died but many were maimed and psychologically scarred.
So what did the US do to the hundreds of Japanese medical personnel who experimented on Chinese civilians and prisoners of war of many nationalities, including Chinese, Koreans, Russians, Australians, and Americans? They killed an estimated 3,000 people in the infamous Unit 731 in Harbin, in northeastern China before and during World War II – plus tens of thousands of civilians when they field-tested germ warfare. Many of the doctors were academics from Japan’s leading medical schools.
Full Text
Quebec euthanasia bill stalled
The government of Quebec was unable to convince the opposition Liberal Party to complete debate on Bill 52, legislation to legalize euthanasia, in order to bring it to a vote before the Quebec National Assembly adjourned for two weeks. The government has tabled a budget, which takes precedence over other bills. It is believed that the government will call an election when the Assembly returns, which means that the euthanasia bill will not pass. It could be resurrected by a government formed after the election. [CBC News]