WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services is considering a request from the American Civil Liberties Union that it compel Catholic hospitals to provide emergency abortions.
But the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has vowed not only to provide free legal defense for any hospital the HHS takes action against, but to sue the feds to stop them.
“We have acknowledged receipt of letters from the ACLU and an organization holding the opposite view, but have taken no other action,” said Ellen Griffith, spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “All we can say is that the matter is before us for consideration.”
But Becket Fund director of litigation Eric Rassbach said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services may simply be waiting to see how the midterm congressional election goes. With a Democratic majority, “the administration may decide that ‘now we can push for this’ — or not, if there is a Republican majority.”
Rassbach calls the ACLU move “an attempt to use an administrative application to undermine what Congress has tried to protect” — namely the freedom of religious hospitals to refuse to do abortions or other acts contrary to conscience.
The ACLU wrote the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services acting administrator Marilyn Tavenner on July 1, arguing that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), passed by Congress in 1986, includes “emergency reproductive health care” — i.e., abortions — in its requirement that all hospitals treat anyone needing emergency health care, regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay.
The request cites the highly publicized November 2009 case at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, in which Sister Margaret McBride, who sat on the hospital’s ethics committee, was excommunicated after voting to approve an abortion to end a pregnancy with serious health risks for the mother.
The ACLU went on to describe three other cases (without giving names) where, it claimed, Catholic hospitals endangered the lives of pregnant women or caused serious injury by refusing to perform abortions.
According to the ACLU, “There is no basis for a hospital to impose its own religious criteria on a patient to deny her emergency care.”
Yes, there is, says John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center: the Church Amendment. No sooner did the Supreme Court legalize abortion with its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade than “a Catholic hospital was hit with a court order forcing it to do sterilizations. Congress responded the same year by passing the Church Amendment, named after Senator Frank Church.” It prohibits federal agencies from requiring religious hospitals to perform either abortions or sterilizations.
Other amendments along the same lines have followed, protecting pharmacists and individual medical practitioners, but so have efforts to limit their effects.
“We know what the agenda of the ACLU is,” Haas said. “And it’s what the National Abortion Rights Action League wants. No restriction on abortion: the unbridled right to choose.”
Double Effect
Haas says the ACLU letter misrepresents Catholic teaching on abortion. While the unborn child’s life can never intentionally be taken, he says, “according to the doctrine of double effect, an operation can be done to save the mother” even if it has “the effect” of the death of the child.
Haas went on to say that some Catholic hospitals may not understand this doctrine, which is why the NCBC offers them courses and programs in medical ethics.
The Catholic Health Association, which represents Catholic hospitals, declined to respond to the Register’s request for comment, but in July, its CEO, Sister Carol Keehan, told Catholic News Service that “a couple of stories that the ACLU has dredged up doesn’t hold a candle to the competent care and respect for both mothers and their infants that have been a daily part of life in the maternity units and neonatal units of Catholic hospitals for decades.”
Half of the 20 largest health organizations in the U.S. are Catholic, and “pro-choice” critics such as Catholics for Choice call the recent spate of mergers between Catholic and other hospital providers an expansion of the Catholic ban on abortions.
The ACLU, in response to the Register’s request for an interview, sent a prepared statement that said, in part: “The ACLU firmly believes in the fundamental right to religious exercise and expression, and we have a long history of defending that right.
“But this does not mean that a hospital can deny a woman emergency care and put her life and health at risk because it is affiliated with a religion that opposes abortion. … We all may not agree about abortion, but we should be able to agree that hospitals that serve the general public should not be permitted, under any circumstances, to violate federal law and deny life-saving care.”
Rassbach told the Register that the ACLU is trying to get around the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom with a regulatory decision, just as pro-abortion forces hope to see HHS regulatory decisions force health insurance to pay for all abortions.
“The Becket Fund will defend any hospital if the government goes after them,” said Rassbach. “So far nobody has taken us up on our offer, I think, because the government hasn’t taken any action — yet.”
Register correspondent Steve Weatherbe writes from Victoria, British Columbia.
Edward Pentin: Images of Rome's 2013 March for Life
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A direct attack on a human life - whether life still in the womb, or outside of it - is never morally licit.
To do all in their power to to safeguard the life and health of the mother facing complications of pregnancy or other serious illness, is of course, an admirable goal, and a goal of extreme importance. But to resort to slaughtering the innocent whose existence may happen to appear to hinder the realization of this goal - that goes beyond the realm of “health care” and into another realm entirely - that of willful murder, one of the Sins that Cry Out to Heaven For Vengeance.
By all means, every medical treatment for the mother facing complications of pregnancy or other serious illness, should be made available, even if the medical treatment may indirectly result in the loss of the child she carries. But to intentionally *target* the child’s life for destruction? No. That would be a sin of the gravest order.
Doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators - and all Christians - should rather be willing to to be mowed down by the machine-gun-toting agents of the secularist uber-state, than consent to commit such a sin.
The ACLU, for some time now, is simply the mouthpiece of all things evil. The individuals who run that organization have twisted thinking. God help them figure it out… that’s my prayer for them!
As a high-risk labor and delivery nurse for over 20 years, in the busiest hospital in Illinois, I must say I have never seen a case that could rightfully be called an “emergency” abortion. This whole scenario is a distortion for underhanded purposes.
It seems that many people do not know that a fetus is a human person. And it’s possible that some who intentionally remove a fetus without concern for the fetus or without knowledge that it’s a human person might not be guilty of “murder” or even of anything at all. That is the state we live in.
I’m not sure if it’s an ‘unbridled right to choose’ so much as it is an organized endorsement by NARAL to be able to coerce women into having abortions (a very profitable business.) I know several women who were ‘convinced,’ ‘cajoled,’ ‘frightened’ or otherwise forced into having an abortion by someone (often the father but sometimes friends or relatives) who felt that there was no better solution for the so-called problem at hand. If abortion were not painted as such an easy answer, there may be fewer women today regretting what they did so many years ago. Please remember to pray for those women and their lost children.
What about the civil liberties of the helpless unborn children whose lives will be taken by force through these abortions? Will anyone speak out upon their behalf? I will. “Take my hand, not my life!”
I am tired of the ACLU thinking that they are going to educate Catholic Hospitals on matters of our faith! Butt out!
Catholic hospitals are in the business of healing. They are in the business of saving lives. Destroying lives, last time I checked, was not in the Hippocratic oath. Abortion is okay? Fine, let’s abort the ACLU!
Bleeding-heart organizations such as the ACLU and “human rights” groups pick and choose which rights they will uphold. More often than not, they come down on the wrong side. There is not rights cafeteria where one makes selections. One is either in favour of life, all life, or not. One is either in favour of conscience rights for everyone or not. So much of the argumentation of these organizations involves massaging the truth until a Frankenstein monster appears. The monster in this case is Planned Parenthood.
Unfortunately, Sr. Carol Keehan speaks for the CHA and as usual, dodges the questions about abortion in Catholic Hospitals. She heartily endorsed the Health Care bill (Obamacare!)totally denying abortion would be covered and paid for with our tax dollars. This is where our Bishops are failing us by not speaking out to her and correcting her! Why do they let her? Is CHA truly a Catholic entity???
Let me state again: America has kicked God out of the window and installed Satan on the throne. The obsession with which this Nation is seeking everywhichway to annihilate unborn babies wholesale is shocking. If this latest attempt suceeds, then all the Catholic Hospitals must close down and let Obama open his own where he can realize his satanic agenda of wholesale genocide of God’s Creation
“It seems that many people do not know that a fetus is a human person. And it’s possible that some who intentionally remove a fetus without concern for the fetus or without knowledge that it’s a human person might not be guilty of “murder” or even of anything at all. That is the state we live in.”
I- ignorance when the truth is readily available does not condone guiltlessness, it instead implies the sad fact that because people are so wrapped up in themselves and their own desires that they choose not to see that it is in fact a child; people choose not to see the truth because it is inconvenient to them and their lifestyle. Even in cases where a woman was raped is this true, they would rather not have the inconvenience of remembering an incident that scarred them for life in the image of the child they could bear to term. This is not condoning rape, having suffered a similar incident myself, I could never condone it, but it was never that child’s fault…
Five years ago a law was passed in Massachusetts requiring all hospitals in the state to offer emergency contraception to patients who claim they have been raped. The medication of choice, known as Plan B, or the Morning After Pill, sometimes works by preventing a newly conceived embryo from implanting in the uterine wall. In other words, it causes an abortion, and therefor its use has been specifically forbidden by, among ohers, the Pontifical Academy for Life. Unfortunately, Massachsetts Catholic hospitals are not exempt from the law requiring the administration of abortifacient drugs to rape victims, and Massachusetts bishops have remained strangely silent on the issue.
Hey, Charles, you should by now have written a letter to your Bishops demanding that they comment about this Legislation and issue Pastoral Directives stating the Church’s stand on this Legislation and advise all Catholics Hospitals under their Sees to do the right thing. Each and every one of us must stand up and fight for God’s unborn babies and oppose all the other anti-God Laws which are being passes or campaigns which are mounted by whatever anti-life and anti-family pressure groups. It is not enough just complaining that the Bishops have not said anything about this Legislation. That is why we have, in this part of the world - Kenya, East Africa - The Catholic Justice and Peace Commission. Our mandatory duty, as lay Catholics, is to fight all evil wherever we detect it and ensure our Bishops and Archbishops take up the cases we bring up, so that immediate and appropriate action can be taken. We do not even wait for the Bishops and Archbishops or even the Kenya Episcopal Conference to announce a meeting for us to forward to them the hot issues of the day which the Church needs to address. We are pro-active and vigilant at all times. Catholics in America should emulate us.
Mary 42: Thanks for your comments. I wrote the bishops in charge of each Massachusetts diocese five years ago in an effort to get the Emergency Contraception legislation blocked. In fact, the Governor vetoed the legislation, but the veto was overridden in the Legislature. About 70 percent of the members of the Legislature are Catholic, so you might think that it would be easy to get the relatively small number of votes needed to sustain the veto. Wrong. Moreover, the Church made no effort to kill the bill and it has been the law ever since. I have had a few letters published in the Catholic press on the subject, and periodically write our Archbishop, Cardinal Sean O’Malley. He has never responded to my letters. Pro-lifers here are in a fix, and I can see two possible reason for this. First, at least 90 percent of sexually active Catholic women who do not want to become pregnant use some form of contraception. Most of the chemicals and devices employed periodically cause early abortions. For example, in the United States there are 10 million users of oral contraceptives. Pharmacists for Life estimates that between 600,000 to 3 million infant homicides are caused annually by this type of abotifacient contraceptive alone. Let’s face it, this is big time serious sin, and I don’t think the clergy want to bring it up for fear of embarrassing their congregations. There also is a strong possibility that the Devil has gotten a very firm foothold here, and that he has an exceptionally strong influence over many politicians and some members of the clergy. For example, we were first in the country to legalize same-sex marriage, and instruction on homosexual behavior is provided in the earliest grades. So, it isn’t just abortion that we have to worry about.
THERESE60640 has it right. “Emergency abortion” is an oxymoron.
Sadly, there are some Catholic hospitals that are already performing abortions but under another name; and there are abortionists on staff in Catholic Hospitals although they are not supposed to perform abortions there…as long as our Bishops continue to allow those who publicly support and advocate for abortion to receive Holy Communion, many Catholics will continue to believe it is not a serious sin. And those ‘Catholic’ politicians will continue to believe that they are in good standing with the Church - like Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Christopher Dodd, Tom Daschle etc…Biden even went to Africa to convince the Kenyans to allow abortion in their new constitution promising them that if they would do this,then the money would flow - so Biden promotes abortion not only here but abroad and is still considered by our Bishops to be a Catholic in good standing and thereby permitted to receive the Eucharist. Shame…
Maybe I’m looking at this wrong, but if the ACLU forces this on Catholic hospitals, aren’t they violating the separation of Church and State that they so valiantly proclaim? And aren’t they forgetting that it’s freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion?
If the ACLU is funded by tax payer money, like Planned Parenthood, I say DEFUND the ACLU.It seems like they always want to come after the Catholic Church and its practices which are the teachings of Jesus Christ. What happened to “separation of Church and State”? I pray that they repent of their EVIL ways, for at present they are on the way to damnation, but God’s Son died for such and hopefully they realize how wrong they are and repent before it is too late.
If we take Caesar’s coins, we have to play by Caesar’s rules.
Many Catholic colleges and universities in the US did this in the 1970s, when they volunteered to surrender their Catholic identity in order to receive government money.
Catholics in America are the richest Catholics in the world, but we are too selfish to fund this ourselves—we’ll take Caesar’s money and complain as we are forced to follow Caesar’s rules.
Thank you Charles for responding to me. Yes, I agree with you and as I have stated elsewhere, American has kicked God out of the window. Satan in on the Throne. Martin, you are right, too. Biden did come here in Kenya to ensure the Provisions drafted by Planned Parenthood including abortion, same-sex marriages and the other abominations and which they had sent to our Commission of Experts who drafted our new Constitution were not deleted as the Catholic Church and other Christian Churches were demanding. Obama had also pumped millions of dollars to ensure that Constitution containing those satanic Provisions was passed. During the campaign period on the draft Constitution, His Ambassador went all over the country bribing Kenyans openly to ensure the Constitution was passed. The Kenya Episcopal Conference worked very hard to educate Kenyans on those hidden satanic Clauses but because of the American pressure, bribery, many Kenyans were made to believe the Church was lying and those Provisions were not in the Draft Constitution. In the end, our Cardinal, H.E John Njue gave the final warning to all of us with these words: “You are going to pass this Constitution. But when it begins to be implemented and you begin to realize the calamity you have brought upon yourselves, you shall remember that we had warned you”. As I reply to you on this Website, many Catholics are now lamenting for having believed the poticians who lied to them that those evil Provisions were in the draft Constitution. In conclusion, the duty of the Church is to proclaim the Truth and the Gospel of Christ and warn mankind against ignoring God’s Divine Law. In this instance, the Church world-wide is warning humanity against these most heinous crimes they have accepted as normal - wholesale mass murder of unborn babies and the destruction of the Institution of Matrimony and Family by accepting homosexuality and lesbianism and same-sex marriages as normal. God is watching and He will act in His Own Time. These are Cardinal Sins for which He shall punish mankind very, very severely.
We are only getting a small taste of leftist tyranny. It will get much worse. They have regard only for their own dominion. They hate all else; family, God, morality are all poison to them. Their works reveal who their master is.
In the end, they will lose. But in the meantime, we all will suffer.
Jason, as I stated in the above Post on 9th November, the gays and lesbians - along with commercial sex workers - came out to demonstrate and demand their Rights and recognition and acceptance here in Kenya on 1st December which is celebrated as the International AIDS Day. Many people - and Catholics in particular - who were previously convinced by the politicians that the Catholic Church was lying when she objected to the protected Human Rights Provisions in the draft Constitution - were shocked to realize that, in fact, the gays’ and lesbians’ rights are provided for in our new Constitution. The next reality to hit them like a thunderbolt was the shocking fact that under the Children Rights’ Clauses, children from 10 years old will be introduced to sex education, supplied with contraceptives by Clinics to be opened countrywide and run by NGOs funded by Obama and Planned Parenthood. Abortions will be carried out in these Clinics to children who get pregnant. (And this Law, is the One among a few other Provisions which are Protected Rights in our Constitution and can never be amended UNLESS BY A REFERENDUM which ensures that they shall never, ever be amended). All these activities will be undertaken without the knowledge or consent of the parents or guardians. The same Constitutional Provision provides that should the parents know and raise objections to their children being encouraged to engage in indiscriminate sexual acts and use of contraceptives, they will have committed a criminal offence of infringing on the Human Rights of those children and will be prosecuted and when found guilty will be liable to a Fine of not less that KShs.300,000/- or three years’ jail term - or both!!!! Abortion on demand for women has also been entrenched in the Constitution as well as euthanasia. The same Constitution allows infidelity in marriages, in that a spouse is entitled to have a sexual partner/s outside marriage as his/her Human Right and the other partner has no right to interfere or object. Otherwise that partner will have committed a criminal offence and shall be punished for infringing on the Sexuality Human Right of his/her partner. That is what Obama and Planned Parenthood has brought to Kenya. That is what Biden came to exhort us to accept. And that is what the American Ambassador has been working on to ensure everything is in place and working. In short, Obama and America have put in place a Constitution for Kenya that will destroy the Family, kill unborn children in their millions, destroy our Society and the entire Moral Fabric of our Nation. His Ambassador is also involved in mobilizing and funding the youth countrywide, radicalizing them so that they can cause a political uprising and force a change of Government. The entire country has now woken up to the diabolical plans Obama and American have on Kenya. Yet we would have saved ourselves from this catastrophe if only we had listened to the warnings by Christians Churches - and the Catholic Church in particular - who tirelessly warned Kenyans of the dangerous Provision in the Draft Constitution and begged them to reject that draft Constitution because they were aware of the American Agenda against us. Athough the information and the dangerous plans of America of recruiting and funding the youth to rise against the Goverment was in the hands of our Intelligence Authorities, the WiliLeaks have made it public to the whole world. And yet, this Ambassador is adamant he is going nowhere and the American Agenda for Kenya must be realized at whatever cost. But we are praying God will be on our side and spare us the evil that has been visited upon us by Obama and the American Administration who are the Agents on the Evil One
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