Protect patients first. Don’t place undue burdens on their access to legal procedures.

The Gospel according to Sekulow! God speaks to Sekulow, and Sekulow tells the world! Sekulow, Sekulow, Sekulow, Almighty!

Is it a matter of conscience whether or not a doctor refuses a patient because the patient is gay? Is it a matter of conscience if a doctor refuses to treat a patient with Hepatitis C because the doctor believes that the patient acquired the disease through an irresponsible or “unbiblical” lifestyle? Is it a matter of conscience to decline to provide a treatment and subsequently neglect to tell the patient where to seek the treatment (for, after all, isn’t making a referral nearly as bad as performing the procedure?), therefore denying information to a patient that may have been useful or necessary?
Medical providers do not check their consciences at at the door when they go to work, but neither do patients give up their right to receive the best and most complete medical care possible, free of discrimination and judgment. When you are hired to do a job, you do it.
This sounds like an absolute nightmare. Imagine a small town somewhere where suddenly the handful of HIV+ residents in the area can no longer receive any medical treatment, because all doctors decline to treat them. Or where unmarried women cannot get prescriptions for birth control, because none of the local doctors or pharmacists approve of sex outside of marriage. A nightmare!
Medical care is literally a matter of life and death. Patient safety is paramount. No one is going to make a doctor perform an abortion when he or she objects, but we are talking about expanding the “freedom of conscience” to where a medical provider may pick and choose his or her duties at will. When you have a job to do, you do it.

Lost Left Coaster,
You consider someone seeking out an abortion as one seeking out medical care. Medical care is defined as “professional treatment for illness or injury.” An abortion neither treats an illness or injury. Except in the case of a mothers life, abortion is the termination of life. It isn’t a treatment of an illness or injury.
It’s also not in violation to the Hippocratic oath that doctors undergo. Health professionals are required to save life, but should never be required to end life.
The examples you gave of being gay or having hepatitis having nothing to do with intentionally taking life.
There should be enough freedom of conscience to be able to refrain from killing life. Medical professionals should be obligated to preserve life regardless of their religious or moral positions, however they should never be obligated to end life. They should have the freedom of conscience there don’t you think.

The big problem is when Sekulow quotes HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt: “Doctors and other health care providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience. Freedom of expression and action should not be surrendered upon the issuance of a health care degree.”
Freedom of conscience is not surrendered upon the issuance of a health care degree. It is surrendered to the state upon the issuance of a license to practice in that community.
The first time Sekulow or his family is denied critical medical treatment because the doctor thinks Sekulow is a Jewish name and his conscience won’t let him treat Christ -killers, he’ll get the message. Doctors need to give their patients all the facts, not just the options that are in line with their consciences.

“Except in the case of a mother’s life, abortion is the termination of life.”
I disagree and I think a woman’s right to decide what she does with her reproductive organs is hers and hers alone. And I think that concrete reality is more important than someone else’s values or opinions about what she should do with her reproductive organs.
Doctors and health care providers are people who have power over their patients’ bodies and overall well being and I think it’s appropriate for the government to protect the individual rights of patients when it comes to their health care choices, more important than protecting the conscience of someone who stepped into a profession out of choice.

Jay Sekulow claims: “…but the proposed regulation provides needed protection for health care providers without endangering patient health.”
I see nothing in the HHS statement or proposed regulation to suggest that a patient’s health might not be endangered. The delay and stress from locating and trekking to an alternate provider is not always an insignificant factor in a patient’s health. Could you do me the favor of citing the appropriate section wherein the mechanisms to ensure patient health are described?

I did acknowledge that a doctor shouldn’t be obligated to perform an abortion. As a matter of fact, doctors are not now obligated to perform abortions. Or am I mistaken? New regulations to protect that are not necessary. I’m not advocating that all doctors must perform abortions. I would neither advocate that all doctors should perform plastic surgery or heart transplants.
What we’re talking about is expanding the definition of “following one’s conscience” in the health care community to include much more, and just how much more, we do not know, because the HHS language is so broad. Therefore, it could conceivably be a “matter of conscience” whether or not a doctor accepts a gay patient or a disease acquired in a particular manner. Is that not the case? Please point me to language in the new HHS regulations that ensures that this is not the case.
Also, I agree with Argon; I have read the regulations and also cannot find exactly how patient health and safety is protected in light of care providers that may refuse treatment as a matter of conscience. I would appreciate if anyone could cite the appropriate sections that support what Mr. Sekulow states.
On the matter of reproductive health and conscience, I highly recommend that people look at what the actual professionals that deal with these matters have to say, a voice that seems to be lacking in the debate, both here and at large. That is, here is a statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, in PDF form, entitled “The Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine.”
http://www.acog.org/from_home/publications/ethics/co385.pdf
A discussion and summary of this statement and the HHS regulations can be found at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum:
http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=2084

Let’s take this conscience claim a little further. What if the Dr or drugist subscribes to a faith that says the body is God’s temple? We are told that heart disease is caused by diet and lack of exercise. Will we be required to submit a certified report on our diet and exercise routine before we can see the Dr or get a precription filled. Once the camel get’s its nose under the tent you can’t stop him from getting all the way in. When do my rights to health care stop?

“I disagree and I think a woman’s right to decide what she does with her reproductive organs is hers and hers alone. And I think that concrete reality is more important than someone else’s values or opinions about what she should do with her reproductive organs.”
Here you equate a human life to reproductive organs. This position is manifestly false. Whether you will be intellectually honest enough to admit it or not, the product of conception is offspring. The level of development of the offspring is irrelevant for this argument. It remains and independent entity. As an independent entity, replete with its unique DNA, not to mention reproductive organs of its own, it cannot with any intellectual integrity be classified as merely a woman’s reproductive organs. Such argumentation is fraught with problems and has no scientific support.
Go ahead and think it mere reproductive organs, but reality is disgustingly indifferent to what you think. To regard it as mere reproductive organs is reminiscent of slave owners regarding slaves as property. Just because the social consensus was that slaves were property, that didn’t validate the slave owner position. The claim that a pregnant woman’s developing offspring is merely a reproductive organ is incredibly incoherent and deliberately misleading.

In days long ago past the Catholic Church insisted that no anesthesia be used during surgery. Why? Because all men were sinners and were obligated to suffer for their sins (ouch!) and because anesthesia contradicted “natural law.” This is the same body of “natural law” the Church cites in its objection to some forms of birth control. Thank goodness the Catholics have changed their position on anesthesia… probably because they found that they just couldn’t enforce it.
In the less distant past, women knew about herbs and plants that either worked to prevent pregnancy or to cause abortions. We’ve lost this traditional knowledge here in the U.S. because of our dependency on doctors to take care of us, but there are still a few grandmothers and some midwives who have this knowledge. Women should seek out these women, encourage them to pass on their knowledge to the next generation, and pay them well to do so.
Don’t worry, Mr. Sekulow. A woman who wants an abortion will always find a way. Women in the past have been willing to risk their lives to abort their unwanted pregnancies. They still are willing to take that risk! And of those who do and who actually die? Well their blood is on your head, Sir.

Abortion ends a life and there is no way to change that fact. You argue about the right of the mother to have an abortion what about the right of the unborn child to have a life. The mother made her choice, she chose to partake in a mature act. Don’t make the unborn child die because you want to protect the mother’s right. We are supposed to protect those that can’t protect themselves! Who needs more protection then an unborn child.
People who claim an unborn fetus is not alive or a child have lost their way. Since when have we become not responsible for our own actions. Please stop the insanity of abortions on demand.

Medical professionals should be able to protect life and not foster death by not being forced to perform abortion on demand. I think I would be safe in saying that a majority of providers are against this procedure taking into account the 44,000 people who signed the petition in support of the conscience clause during Pres. Barack’s administration. Therefore, their views should be heard and be responded to in an appropriate fashion.