Category: ChristianityCatholic

Bill Undermines Conscientious Objection to VAD

CQ Today

Duncan Evans

Conscientious objection to voluntary assisted dying (VAD) may not be an option for Queenslanders if the state government’s bill to legalise VAD is passed in its present form, a leading healthcare provider has warned.

In a media statement released last week, Mater Board Chair Francis Sullivan AO said the proposed legislation would force Mater to allow assisted dying to take place at its facilities in direct contradiction to the moral ethos upon which the healthcare provider delivers patient care to Queenslanders.

“The proposed law will also compel Mater and other not-for-profit providers to allow doctors who are not known to our hospitals to enter our facilities to administer lethal doses to our patients,” Mr Sullivan said. . . . continue reading

COVID Vaccination and Conscience Debate Intensifies

Amid a spike of cases and concerns about the Delta variant, some U.S. bishops oppose a religious exemption, yet ethics experts caution against mandates.

National Catholic Register

Judy Roberts

An increase in COVID-19 cases sparked by the Delta variant has sharpened the divide among Catholics in the United States over whether individuals should be required to inoculate against the coronavirus or have the right in conscience to decline the currently available vaccines.   

Amid a wave of new vaccine mandates being rolled out by businesses and institutions in response to the spike, Catholics who morally object to the vaccines are finding themselves at odds with those who think the ethical obligation to protect public health should be the foremost consideration.  . . continue reading

Ruling blocking HHS ‘transgender mandate’ called ‘victory for conscience’

Catholic Review

CNA Staff

WASHINGTON (CNS) — A U.S. District Court judge’s Aug. 9 ruling to block the Biden administration’s mandate that doctors and hospitals perform gender-transition procedures despite their own moral or medical objections is “a victory for common sense, conscience and sound medicine.”

That is the view of Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, based in Washington. He is the lead counsel for the plaintiffs in the case.

“Today’s ruling protects patients, aligns with current medical research, and ensures doctors aren’t forced to violate their religious beliefs and medical judgment,” he said about the ruling in Franciscan Alliance v. Becerra. . . continue reading

Spanish win the right to medically assisted death

New Frame

Alex Čizmić, Ricard Gonzalez

Carme Barahona wears a smile that is only erased when she recalls how her son Ivan Martí died in late 2017. “He sent me a message saying: ‘Thanks for taking care of me, mom. I am going to rest’.” 

Marti, 43, had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, an incurable neurodegenerative disease that results in a progressive loss of movement and eventually death. Right after receiving her son’s farewell message, Barahona made sure to clock in at her job to prove she had not helped him take his life. Otherwise, she might have been imprisoned. 

Since 25 June, however, this risk no longer exists. Spain has legislated that its citizens who suffer from a “chronic and incurable disease, with an unbearable physical or mental suffering” have the right to ask for medical assistance to die. . . continue reading

The Battle for Conscience Rights Rages On

National Catholic Register

Michael Warsaw

In February 2012, EWTN filed the first of its legal challenges against the Obama administration’s so-called “HHS mandate,” which would have forced organizations like EWTN and the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraception, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures as part of our employer-sponsored health-care plans. For EWTN, that legal battle went on for nearly seven years — and for the Little Sisters, even longer. At the heart of that fight was whether or not the government could force faith-based organizations to act contrary to their deeply held religious values and in violation of their conscience.

More than nine years later, the issue of conscience rights is again taking center stage in our national discussions as the Biden administration continues to ramp up its promotion of tax-funded abortion and “gender-transition” medical treatments.

Earlier in March, the Senate confirmed Xavier Becerra, a Catholic who dissents openly from the Church’s foundational moral teachings regarding the sanctity of human life and sexuality, as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. As attorney general of California, Becerra infamously filed suit to take away the religious exemptions protecting the Little Sisters of the Poor from the provisions of the HHS mandate. 

The Senate also confirmed Dr. Rachel Levine, a biological man who identifies as a transgender woman, as assistant secretary of the HHS. 

With these two officials at the helm, the HHS is certain to rapidly accelerate the Biden administration’s radical agenda of tax-funded abortion and mandatory gender-reassignment treatments, including for children and teens. . . continue reading