[Pflienews] PharmFacts E-News Update: Cardinal defends rights of conscience; where are the 299 other bishops?

[PFLI PharmAid Center]

*PharmFacts E-News Update -- 23 Jul 2008 AD

*

*/CATHOLIC NEW AGENCY (CNA)/*

*/ /*

*/Cardinal Rigali defends conscience protections for pro-life health 
workers/*

 


Washington DC, Jul 22, 2008 / 04:28 am (CNA 
<http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/>).- Cardinal Justin Rigali has 
written a letter to all members of the U.S. Congress defending 
conscience protections for pro-life health care workers. According to 
the cardinal, due to a lack of executive action some institutions may be 
violating conscience protection laws "without even knowing it."

Cardinal Rigali, who is Archbishop of Philadelphia and Chairman of the 
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities, 
wrote the July 18 letter in response to a New York Times article about a 
draft proposal requiring that any program run or funded by the U.S. 
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must certify that it will 
not refuse to hire nurses and other healthcare workers who object to 
abortion and abortifacient contraceptives.

News of the proposal prompted criticism from abortion rights supporters. 
On Friday Sen. Hillary Clinton said the draft was a "gratuitous, 
unnecessary insult" to women.

While noting that he was not specifically responding to the reported 
proposal, Cardinal Rigali said some of the proposal's critics had made 
"sweeping" charges that did not acknowledge the legal tradition of 
freedom of conscience in health care. He said legal conscience 
protections in health care are not new, having been in force since at 
least the 1973 "Church amendment."

However, Cardinal Rigali argued, conscience-protection statues have not 
been clarified or enforced through regulations. "Relatively few policy 
makers or health care personnel are even aware that these laws exist... 
some institutions may be violating the law without even knowing it," he 
wrote.

Referring to the 2007 decision of the Ethics Committee of the American 
College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which issued an opinion 
stating that pro-life physicians must provide abortion referrals, he 
said the college had to be reminded by the Secretary of Health and Human 
Services that federal conscience protection laws have directed against 
such requirements.

"It seems the statutory policy is clear and needed, and at the same time 
is relatively unknown, misunderstood, and unenforced," the cardinal 
wrote, saying that implementing such statues is a "proper task" of the 
federal executive branch.

Cardinal Rigali said critics of the reported draft revealed a reversal 
in pro-abortion groups' rhetoric. Despite having insisted that abortion 
and its related services are "basic" aspects of health care that are 
opposed only by a tiny minority, the cardinal argued, pro-abortion 
groups now claim that conscientious objection to such procedures is "so 
pervasive in the health care professions that policies protecting 
conscience rights will eliminate access to them."

"Obviously these two claims cancel each other out," the cardinal 
asserted, adding that patients with pro-life convictions deserve access 
to health care professionals who "do not have contempt for their 
religious and moral convictions or for the lives of their children."

Self-described "pro-choice" advocates, he said, must address whether 
they agree that abortion is a "moral concern" or at least whether they 
hold that "freedom of choice" must belong to everyone, including those 
with deep moral concerns about abortion.

He concluded his letter with a rhetorical question: "Or is the 
'pro-choice' label a misleading mask for an agenda of actively promoting 
and even imposing morally controversial positions on those who 
conscientiously hold different views?"

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