Editor's Note: This is the fourth essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left.
Just as
the Declaration of Geneva's original commitment in 1948 to honor pre-born life
fell to new ideology, so did the original commitment to healthcare professionals'
conscience freedom.
The relevant
clause in the original Declaration of Geneva read simply,
"I will practise my profession with conscience and dignity."[i]
The Declaration recognized that as a professional, a physician professes to ethical standards and then exercises professional judgment in the application of those standards. So the 1948 Declaration did not dictate what specific conscience convictions were allowed or disallowed. Prescribing specific clarifiers would have undermined the main point, which is that a medical professional exercises ethical judgment.
All
that changed, however, within a few decades and with the insertion of a few seemingly
innocuous phrases.
The
U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision
that legalized abortion on demand followed transformational cultural shifts
that helped make abortion socially acceptable. Having won acceptance and legalization,
many abortion advocates have shifted sights to the next goal: eradicating opposition and mandating submission.
Unsatisfied
with the mere acceptance and legalization of their position, they now aim at
forcing others to submit to and carry out their ideological agenda. A prime
target for forcing abortion rights doctrine on everyone: conscientious
objectors in the medical community.
 |
| Not content with acceptance and legalization, abortion advocates moved to force everyone--even nuns-- to submit to their ideological agenda. |
"I will practise my profession with conscience and dignity and in accordance with good medical practice." [ii]
Everyone
would have understood the original Declaration statement, "I will practise
my profession with conscience and dignity," to presume good medical practice. No one would have countenanced a
medical ethics oath that provided cover for bad medical practice. By keeping
the statement simple without adding unneeded qualifiers, the original statement
provided for maximal latitude for medical professionals to exercise conscience,
practiced within the bounds of the high dignity of the profession and calling.
So in
the seven decades after the original 1948 Declaration, did new evidence of medical
abuses in the name of conscience require qualifying the original statement? Certainly
if physicians exercising conscience judgment had been causing deaths and harm
to patients, abortion advocates would have shouted it from the rooftops.
So why
then, in the absence of such evidence, would Declaration of Geneva committee
members go to all the trouble to add onto
a complete and satisfactory statement?
When "good medical practice" actually means ideological
conformity
The most
obvious answer is that ideologues, most notably abortion activists, wanted to lay
the groundwork for narrowly defining "good medical practice" to fit their
own radical ideology. If one can assert the claim that abortion is an essential
part of "good medical practice," then a physician can be denied any claim
of conscience as grounds for declining to participate in abortion.
 |
| Obamacare architect and conscience freedom critic Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel |
That is
precisely the path that Obamacare architect
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and University of Pennsylvania professor Ronit Stahl take in
their New England Journal of Medicine
opinion piece, "Physicians, Not Conscripts — Conscientious Objection in
Health Care."[iii]
- First, they contend that "although abortion is politically and culturally contested, it is not medically controversial."[iv] They cite American Medical Association documents to assert that abortion "is a standard obstetrical practice."
- Therefore, they reason, objectors "cannot completely absent themselves from providing these services." [v] (The authors, at least for now, stop short of demanding that objecting physicians perform abortions but still would require all physicians to refer for abortions. Many pro-life physicians view referring for an abortion as an act of complicity in the morally impermissible act of abortion. So requiring a pro-life physician to refer for abortions is like requiring an abolitionist to refer slave buyers to slave traders.
- Finally, to invalidate conscience claims, Emanuel and Stahl invoke patient autonomy, which they consider the trump card against conscience and the highest principle of "good medical practice":
"To invoke conscientious objection is to reject the fundamental obligation of health care — the primary duty to ensure patients’ continued well-being."[vi]
Authors
Emanuel and Stahl, like the Geneva Declaration revisionists, will hardly come
right out and say, "Oh, and by the way, by 'good medical practice,' we
mean participating in abortion." That tie-in task is left to others, and
unfortunately, too many in the medical community are eager to take on the role
of conscience limiters.
Conscience limiters assert "patient's well-being" to leverage
agenda
 |
| ACOG: Conscientious objectors must submit. |
In
fact, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG), in 2007 actually
published an ethics committee opinion declaration entitled, "The Limits of
Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine."[vii] ACOG's
document (which subsequently was tied to the career-determining ethics
requirements of ABOG, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology),
asserted,
"When conscientious refusals conflict with moral obligations that are central to the ethical practice of medicine, ethical care requires either that the physician provide care despite reservations or that there be resources in place to allow the patient to gain access to care in the presence of conscientious refusal." [viii]
Like authors Emanuel and Stahl, ACOG also
cleverly conflated patient well-being with abortion in order to undermine physicians'
conscience freedom:
"In the provision of reproductive services, the patient's well-being must be paramount. Any conscientious refusal that conflicts with a patient's well-being should be accommodated only if the primary duty to the patient can be fulfilled." [ix]
Therefore, ACOG concluded, even physicians conscientiously
opposed to abortion are obligated to refer patients for abortions, and in some
cases, even to perform abortions.
Somehow ACOG obstetricians, in all their deliberations over "a
patient's well-being," never considered that the unborn baby is also a
patient, a patient whose well-being ends abruptly in an abortion.
The
ACOG strategy of undermining physicians' conscience freedoms by trumping those
freedoms with "patient rights" is not an isolated opinion but a
worldwide ideological assault. The framework for coercion and discrimination
against pro-life physicians has been laid down in many arenas, using the
clean-sounding language of patient autonomy, medical consensus/good
medical practice, duty, human rights and civil liberties.
Activists focus first on acceptance, then legalization and finally coercion
 |
| "Patient autonomy" is the handsome Trojan Horse that has infiltrated medicine. |
Abortion
activists are redeploying these positive concepts to build their case for coercing
all health professionals and institutions to participate in morally controversial
practices.
1.
The
strategy begins with using cultural influencers to promote acceptance of a radical agenda.
2.
The
resulting shift in public acceptance helps activists leverage laws to permit the agenda.
3.
The
final stage is eradicating all opposition and mandating participation.
This
same process—acceptance, legalization,
coercion--has been followed by LGBT activists and will be followed by assisted
suicide activists as well.
"Patient
autonomy" is the cornerstone of the radical new ethic. Patient autonomy is
the strategic nuclear weapon deployed to eradicate all competing notions of
morality and all appeals to conscience.
This is
why Declaration of Geneva revisionists insisted on literally "shifting all
new and existing paragraphs focused on patients’ rights to the beginning of the
document, followed by clauses relating to other professional obligations."[x]
"Patient
autonomy" is the handsome Trojan Horse that has infiltrated medicine and opened
the door for the enemies of conscience to coerce, discriminate against and force
pro-life professionals, clinics, care centers and institutions into submission.
[i] Declaration of Geneva,
World Medical Association, adopted October, 1949.
[ii] Declaration of Geneva,
World Medical Association, October 2017.
[iii] "Physicians, Not
Conscripts — Conscientious Objection in Health Care," Ronit Y. Stahl,
Ph.D. and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., New
England Journal of Medicine 376;14, April 6, 2017.
[iv] Ibid, p. 1383.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid, p. 1384.
[vii] "The Limits of
Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine," ACOG Committee Opinion Number
385, November 2007Reaffirmed 2016, Committee on Ethics. Available online at https://www.acog.org/Clinical-Guidance-and-Publications/Committee-Opinions/Committee-on-Ethics/The-Limits-of-Conscientious-Refusal-in-Reproductive-Medicine,
accessed 1/3/2018.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Ramin Walter Parsa-Parsi,
MD, MPH, "The Revised Declaration of GenevaA Modern-Day Physician’s Pledge,"
Journal of the American Medical
Association, Viewpoint October 14, 2017. Available online at https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2658261
accessed 1/3/18.
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