Obama weakens protections for medical professionals opposed to abortion.

by Marilyn Musgrave & Marjorie Dannenfelser
04/28/2009

Excerpt:
More than a few press accounts have treated the Bush administration's set of conscience provisions as if it were one of those curve balls often thrown at the end of lame-duck administrations, unfairly handcuffing or putting a nakedly political burden of proof on a new president.

This narrative is very far from the reality. The conscience regulations are rooted in federal law and congressional intent. The administration, acting mainly through the Department of Health and Human Services, concluded that federal and state bureaucrats, as well as health-care and medical elites, were ignoring numerous conscience provisions that Congress had intended to be taken seriously.

Did Congress ever intend to force doctors to recommend procedures (if not actually perform them) that go against their consciences? Did Congress ever intend to condone the firing of a nurse who reported the starvation of babies born alive during induced labor abortions? Did Congress intend to force Catholic hospitals and personnel morally opposed to abortion to provide or refer for abortions without exception? The administration will find all these examples, and many more, as it reviews affidavits submitted during the recently concluded mandatory 30-day public comment period.

Even more ominously, how likely is it that an administration which fails to define these and similar outrages as unacceptable will fail to include abortion services in its upcoming proposal for national health care reform? If the administration follows through on its openly stated option of making health care reform part of a budget package requiring the vote of only 50 senators under "reconciliation," medical professionals with deeply held moral beliefs across the country will stand to suffer.

Many doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers will confront the dilemma of choosing between their conscience and their call to serve fellow citizens in our nation's hospitals and clinics. They will be forced to either violate their conscience and keep their jobs, or respect their beliefs and pay the price by leaving their careers. the rest

So Far, So Good? Only 1,361 days to go.

Persecuting his predecessors, Obama would establish a poisonous precedent