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Catholics Without Conscience
Posted by Tom McFeely
Tuesday, April 07, 2009 11:43 AM
U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (CNS)
It’s depressing to have to refer this way to 16 Catholic members of the U.S. Senate.
But the 16 Catholic senators have earned this depressing designation by their conduct last week regarding a vote that would have amended a Senate budget bill to safeguard conscience protections for pro-life medical personnel.
Here is a list of the 16 senators to vote against the conscience-protection amendment, introduced by Republican Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn: Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn, Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Conn., Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., Sen. Tom Harkin , D-Iowa, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.
These Catholic senators voted against legislating conscience protection for medical personnel, even though the U.S. bishops have called forcefully for such protection to be extended.
As one of his last acts in office, President George W. Bush authorized the Department of Health and Human Services to extend enhanced conscience protections for providers of medical services. But President Barack Obama indicated last month he intends to revoke Bush’s executive action, prompting Sen. Coburn’s effort to protect conscience rights legislatively instead.
The 30-day period for public comment about Obama’s planned move expires on Thursday.
Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, had this to say yesterday about the importance of conscience protections for medical personnel.
“Freedom of conscience today is universally recognized as a basic human right. But achieving that recognition was a centuries-long struggle — a struggle that was at the origin of why we exist as a nation,” Bishop Murphy said in a column published by Religion News Service. “Today, that same freedom of conscience is being threatened by the Obama Administration as it seeks to rescind Health and Human Services regulations that guarantee conscience protection for healthcare workers.”
Bishop Murphy noted in his column that the conscience rights of medical personnel to refuse to participate in actions that violate their fundamental beliefs, such as abortion, have been formally recognized in U.s. law for the past 36 years. But, he also noted, “some state and local governments — as well as professional societies and advocacy groups — still attack conscience rights as though they do not exist. At the same time, many healthcare providers do not even know they have these rights. Enforcement is also hampered by undefined terms in the laws, and by failure to identify a federal office that is responsible for defending these conscience rights.”
Continued Bishop Murphy, “To clarify the laws, regulations adopted last year by the Bush administration define key terms: for example, they explain what kinds of healthcare providers are covered, and what it means to say that providers cannot be forced to ‘assist’ in performing objectionable procedures. It requires certain recipients of federal funds to certify that they understand and will comply with the conscience laws, and it gives responsibility for enforcement to the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Civil Rights.”
Revoking these common-sense clarifications, Bishop Murphy warned, would violate a foundational American principle.
“Despite attacks from politically powerful professional and advocacy groups that support unlimited access to abortion, the U.S. government surely has the obligation to stand by the right of conscience as one of the nation’s enduring first principles,” he said. “We stand on the shoulders of women and men who left their homes and native lands so that they could not be coerced into worshiping at religious rites in which they did not believe.”
Declared Bishop Murphy, “Surely no Americans — individuals or institutions — should be coerced into taking, or supporting the taking, of innocent human life where they believe it exists.”
| Filed under bishop murphy, conscience protection, u.s. senate
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