In the early days of his new administration, President Barack Obama announced plans to reverse the Conscience Rule, a law instigated by the Bush administration that allowed doctors and medical workers the freedom to deny abortion and family planning services due to moral convictions.
The regulation has encountered opposition from pro-choice groups, arguing it “sacrifices the health of patients to the religious beliefs of medical providers.” The Los Angeles Times reported “seven states including California, Illinois and Connecticut, and two family-planning groups filed lawsuits challenging the Bush rule.”
During the first days of his initiation to office, Obama overturned the Mexico City Policy. Also known as “the global gag-rule,” the ban prohibited federal funding for international organizations that offer abortion services.
In the midst of the current economic crisis, Obama took American tax dollars to support abortion in other countries by reversing the ban; money that Americans could not afford to pay.
The reversal has added more innocent blood to the hands of the United States and has forced Americans opposed to abortion to pay for them in other countries. Now Obama is seeking to legally mandate doctors to perform abortion services even if it’s against their convictions.
With the Conscience Rule reversed, doctors will be forced to perform abortion procedures and to comply with other controversial procedures such as euthanasia, even if it violates their consciences.
Medical professionals who do not wish to comply will be either forced to resign or be terminated. Religious hospitals and clinics will stop medical practices to avoid having to perform procedures, thus creating an absence of religious-based healthcare institutions. There have already been reports of physicians who have lost their positions.
Dr. David Stevens, a conservative physician, debated a Planned Parenthood lawyer on a National Public Radio program. The lawyer stated that physicians must practice all medical procedures, no matter what their consciences tell them.
The attorney said, “If you’re not willing to provide a legal procedure, you have no business being in healthcare.” It seems opponents of the rule have forgotten that the freedom America stands for also includes the sphere of one’s professional and personal ethical judgment.
Although opponents of the rule argue that it endangers victims of sexual assault from receiving contraception or medical care, the argument is based on the minority of cases.
A large number of unplanned pregnancies occur imprudently and result in abortions. Even so, victims of sexual assault already have the choice of visiting Planned Parenthood or other abortion clinics.
Many of these clinics are funded by taxpayers who may or may not agree with their practices; a luxury which pro-life organizations do not enjoy. It is not necessary for the government to violate the freedom of those who do not agree with its policies.
By reversing the conscience rule, the government steps into the offices of medical practitioners and dictates morals and ethics. The government then decides when it is acceptable to take the life of a human being, whether by euthanasia or the abortion of an unborn fetus — and physicians have no choice in the matter.
Becky Yeh is a junior journalism major and a columnist for the Daily Forty-Niner.