It is not surprising that abortion-on-demand advocates are clamoring over the latest effort to protect the right of conscience of health care providers, but the proposed regulation provides needed protection for health care providers without endangering patient health.
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) stated that the proposed regulation "would increase awareness of, and compliance with, three separate laws protecting federally funded health care providers' right of conscience."
As HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt explained, "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." In addition, HHS Assistant Secretary of Health, Admiral Joxel Garcia, M.D., said that "[m]any health care providers routinely face pressure to change their medical practice - often in direct opposition to their personal convictions."
HHS sought to counter the exaggerations of the pro-abortion opponents of the regulation:
"While it would strengthen provider conscience rights, the proposed regulation would in no way restrict health care providers from performing any legal service or procedure. If a procedure is legal, a patient will still have the ability to access that service from a medical professional or institution that does not assert a conflict of conscience. For example, the proposed regulation does not affect the ability of private clinics to provide abortion services in accordance with the law."
In other words, the regulation protects health care providers' right of conscience without affecting patient health. There is no reason why a doctor, nurse, or pharmacist's sincerely held belief that human life begins at conception and is deserving of dignity should cost them their job.
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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.
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