Does allowing doctors, health workers, hospitals or insurance companies to refuse to perform or subsidize abortions conflict with abortion rights?
General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
About.com, an internet content provider, posted an article titled "Hyde-Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment" by Nikki Katz in the Women's Issues section of the site (accessed on Mar. 3, 2005) that stated:
"The Hyde-Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment was introduced by Congressmen Henry Hyde (R.-Ill.) and Dave Weldon (R.-Fla.) and is part of the 2005 Health & Human Services appropriation bill. This bill was signed by President Bush into law on December 8th, 2004. The text specifically states:
(1) None of the funds made available in this Act may be made available to a Federal agency or program, or to a State or local government, if such agency, program, or government subjects any institutional or individual health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the health care entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions. (2) In this subsection, the term 'health care entity' includes an individual physician or other health care professional, a hospital, a provider-sponsored organization, a health maintenance organization, a health insurance plan, or any other kind of health care facility, organization, or plan."
Does allowing doctors, health workers, hospitals or insurance companies to refuse to perform or subsidize abortions conflict with abortion rights?
PRO (yes)
CON (no)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Reproductive Freedom Project wrote in its Jan. 22, 2002 report titled "Religious Refusals and Reproductive Rights" that:
"A refusal clause (sometimes also called a religious exemption or 'conscience clause') ... operates in the health care context to relieve an entity or individual from what would otherwise be a duty to counsel, refer, treat, or insure a patient.
When, ... religiously affiliated organizations move into secular pursuits – such as providing medical care or social services to the public or running a business – they should no longer be insulated from secular laws. In the public world, they should play by public rules....
These institutions ought to abide by the same standards of care and reproductive health mandates as apply to other health care institutions....
As more hospitals are managed by religious entities and more states adopt broad refusal clauses allowing health care providers to deny treatment on the basis of religious or moral objections, more women are harmed and more physicians find themselves thwarted in their efforts to care for their patients."
The ACLU claimed in its Nov. 20, 2004 press release titled "ACLU Condemns Passage of Measure That Allows Religiously Affiliated Health Care Institutions to Jeopardize Women's Health" that:
"A refusal clause (sometimes also called a religious exemption or 'conscience clause') ... operates in the health care context to relieve an entity or individual from what would otherwise be a duty to counsel, refer, treat, or insure a patient.
When, ... religiously affiliated organizations move into secular pursuits – such as providing medical care or social services to the public or running a business – they should no longer be insulated from secular laws. In the public world, they should play by public rules....
These institutions ought to abide by the same standards of care and reproductive health mandates as apply to other health care institutions....
As more hospitals are managed by religious entities and more states adopt broad refusal clauses allowing health care providers to deny treatment on the basis of religious or moral objections, more women are harmed and more physicians find themselves thwarted in their efforts to care for their patients."
The National Abortion Federation (NAF), a national abortion doctors group, posted the following information about the Hyde-Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment on its web site (accessed Mar. 05, 2005):
"Current federal law requires federally funded family planning facilities to provide full options counseling including information about abortion and referrals upon request; these will no longer be requirements for receipt of federal funds.
Medicaid coverage for abortions in cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment will be in jeopardy. HMOs that provide Medicaid care for low-income women will be allowed to claim 'discrimination' and elect not to cover abortions required to be funded currently under the Hyde Amendment.
State laws requiring hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims could be eroded."
Angela Bonavoglia, journalist and author, in her January 1999 article for ProChoice Resource Center titled "Co-Opting Conscience - The Dangerous Evolution of Conscience Clause in American Health Policy," wrote:
"Today, however, conscience clauses have moved dramatically from a straightforward protection of individual rights to a far broader area of influence. Laws are being enacted that exempt religious and other health care entities from providing health care services, information and insurance coverage, and to do so against the will of those they serve or employ who may not share their beliefs.
This avalanche of conscience exemptions for church-run businesses has all but eclipsed the right of the patient to legal, safe and necessary health care services and coverage, based on his or her own conscience."
Susan A. Farrell, PhD, professor of sociology, wrote in a Spring 2005 article titled "Reframing Social Justice, Feminism and Abortion" published in the journal Conscience that:
"The bishops use [the 'conscience clause'] to insist that Catholic hospitals are exempt from federal guidelines to provide women and men with full reproductive services....
Who’s being discriminated against? No word on women struggling to hold body and soul together as they try to raise families, deal with the possibility of health care problems and try to pay for their own and their children’s health care. These religious leaders talk about the conscience rights of institutions, but are dismissive of Catholics who argue for the right of conscience when trying to make decisions about reproductive issues that affect their very lives. Again, this is especially important for poor women. If these hospitals exercise their conscience rights and are the only health care providers available in a given location, women may die."
Maureen Kramlich, Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in a Mar. 2004 article for the Fordham Urban Law Journal, entitled "The Current State of Abortion Law and Reproductive Rights: The Abortion Debate Thirty Years Later: From Choice To Coercion" that:
"The ACLU would deny conscience protection to any hospital that received government funding to care for the poor through, for example, the Medicaid program....
[R]egardless of whether the freedom of a woman to choose to terminate her pregnancy for health reasons lies at the core or the periphery of the due process liberty recognized in Wade, it simply does not follow that a woman's freedom of choice carries with it a constitutional entitlement to the financial resources to avail herself of the full range of protected choices.
As a matter of constitutional law, then, conscience protection does not conflict with the abortion right created by the Court....
[T]he federal government and the states are free to enact laws protecting the conscience rights of health care providers who object to participation in abortion.... But if the state were to compel a health care provider to kill or to engage in acts that the provider regards as killing, such compulsion may be so objectionable that it takes on constitutional dimensions...."
The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), an anti-abortion group, explained in its Sep. 2, 2004 letter to members of Congress, titled "National Right to Life Urges U.S. House of Representatives to Protect Conscience Rights of Health-Care Providers" that:
"The Hyde-Weldon provision does not prohibit any health care provider from voluntarily offering any abortion-related service; it merely ensures that no government agency will discriminate against providers who decline to offer the specific abortion-related services mentioned in the provision....
[The Hyde-Weldon provision] -- is consistent with Medicaid case law that require states to co-fund abortions performed on Medicaid-eligible women in the few circumstances for which federal reimbursement is available (currently life of the mother, rape, and incest). Such abortions can be and are performed by willing abortion providers, without states forcing specific health-care providers to provide abortions in violation of their religious beliefs or ethical standards."
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) wrote in a Fact Sheet titled "ACLU's Misrepresentations about the Hyde/Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment," posted on its web site (accessed on Feb. 25, 2005) that:
"Claim: The amendment would 'disrupt the enforcement of state health care regulations' ....
Response: It is the ACLU approach that would 'disrupt' provision of health care in unprecedented ways.... If states denied licenses and certification to all hospitals that fail to provide the 'full range' of abortions, our health care system would disappear. In fact, the vast majority of states have their own conscience laws that would prevent the enforcement of such a coercive and harmful policy."
Reverend Mark H. Creech, Director of the Christian Action League, wrote in a Mar. 1, 2005 article titled "Protecting Christian Health-Care Providers," published in Agape Press, that:
"[T]he Hyde-Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment... grants freedom of choice to a 'health-care entity,' which means an individual physician or other health-care professional, a hospital, a provider-sponsored organization, a health maintenance organization, a health insurance plan, or any other kind of health-care facility, organization, or plan, does not have to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.... The bill is certainly an excellent step in the right direction....
It's obvious the desire by some to purposely kill humans prior to birth supplants the human right of others to refuse to participate in that killing."
