Action: Submit your comment by Tuesday, March 27 to protect conscience in healthcare
Today I submitted a document to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services outlining the reasons why a new proposed conscience protection rule serves the interests of health professionals and their patients:
TO: Department of
Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights RIN 0945-ZA03
FROM: Christian
Medical Association and Freedom2Care - Jonathan Imbody
RE: RIN 0945-ZA03 or
Docket HHS-OCR-2018-0002
DATE: March 26, 2018
Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of
Authority
The following narrative offers answers to specific requests for
comments (marked below with numbers and quotations) outlined in the text of the
proposed rule.
·
"Comment on all issues raised by the
proposed regulation."
The Christian Medical Association and Freedom2Care, representing
combined constituencies of nearly 50,000 individuals who are committed to the
moral and ethical practice of medicine, heartily applaud this proposed rule. We
laud the Department for producing an outstanding tool to enforce existing conscience
protection law and to educate regarding our most cherished principles of
freedom.
The proposed rule clearly and thoroughly lays down the legal and
rational foundation for the Department's enforcement of and education about existing
federal law that protects the exercise of conscience and religious convictions
in healthcare, both for patients and for professionals. Given the priority of
conscience and religious freedom in our nation's founding, in our Constitution
and in our legal tradition, the case could not be clearer for restoring the
rightful place of these freedoms among other civil rights laws and principles.
Only willful political corruption and ideologically driven assaults
on these core founding principles can explain why in 2018 the universal
integration of conscience and religious freedom in healthcare remains
incomplete. Therefore the proposed rule offers a welcome, if long overdue,
course correction to get the nation back on track on the principles on which
this democratic republic depends.
While the proposed rule offers hope of a renaissance of a
political, cultural and professional commitment to freedom of conscience and
religious exercise, ideological forces within government, academia and the
healthcare community continue to subvert these freedoms. As a survey of medical
and academic publications will indicate, abortion advocacy and a strong
undercurrent of intolerance for faith-based and pro-life commitments would
sweep out of medicine any and all health professionals who hold to such ideals.
A radical and authoritarian ideology that marches under the false flag of
"patient autonomy" would force all professionals to participate in any
legal procedure or prescription, regardless of professional judgment, medical
ethics or moral convictions.
The result of such intolerance and coercion, left unchecked by
federal law, court action and regulatory enforcement, would be a catastrophic
loss of healthcare for millions of American patients. Hardest hit by the loss
of pro-life and faith-based professionals and institutions would be the poor,
the marginalized and the medically underserved.
By enforcing the freedom of pro-life and faith-based health
professionals to continue to practice medicine, the proposed rule protects
patient access to a diverse pool of health professionals and institutions. In
the process, the rule also upholds and advances core American values of freedom.
To read the rest of the document, click here.
To learn how to quickly (30 seconds) submit your own comment on the proposed rule (deadline Tuesday, March 27) using a pre-written, editable form, click here.
To watch a quick video explanation, click here.
