Letter to the Editor
The Daily News,
Harrisonburg, VA
2 September, 2008
Reproduced with permission
Shirley Kirkwood’s recent Open Forum wrongly suggests that a regulation proposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is somehow aimed at blocking contraception use (“Abortion Is A Religious Right,” Aug. 21).
That’s nearly as implausible a stretch as the notion that ending human lives is a religious right. The agency this year alone will spend over $1.6 billion on “family planning” programs.
What has been long established is the right to follow one’s conscience according to the dictates of faith and ethics.
That’s what the regulation will protect, as health care professionals push back against a culture that devalues life and work to restore life-affirming values such as those expressed in the Hippocratic Oath, the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and standards applied to medical ethics.