Essay 15: Medicine needs challengers

History shows that the medical community too often tragically
has failed to police itself, leading to the loss of lives and to grave,
 irreversible injustices. Courageous conscientious objectors
can help challenge a failed system and end the injustice.

As noted in previous essays, a New England Journal of Medicine opinion piece entitled, "Physicians, Not Conscripts — Conscientious Objection in Health Care,"[1] by Obamacare architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and University of Pennsylvania professor Ronit Stahl, advocates for limiting the exercise of conscience objections. The rare ethical issues for which they would countenance conscience freedom are only those issues for which the "healthcare community" has not yet developed a consensus:

"There is, however, a specific role for conscientious objection. It provides limited recourse in professionally contested interventions — that is, interventions about which the health care community is debating whether participation is appropriate or not. For example, physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in five states, and whether physicians should participate in it is at the center of a robust ethical debate among health care professionals. (Conversely, although abortion is politically and culturally contested, it is not medically controversial…)."[2]

If a Supreme Court decision were to unilaterally make assisted suicide on demand legal nationwide, as it did in 1973 with abortion on demand, presumably Emanuel and Stahl's grudging conscience allowances regarding assisted suicide would evaporate.

Essay 14: Edict aimed at pro-life Ob-Gyn's shows what "Choose, you lose" looks like in practice

The Ob-Gyn specialty in particular stands to lose
many physicians by undermining conscience
protections for pro-life doctors.

In a New England Journal of Medicine opinion piece entitled, "Physicians, Not Conscripts — Conscientious Objection in Health Care," Obamacare architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and University of Pennsylvania professor Ronit Stahl advocate ridding healthcare of conscience protections. [1]

Eliminating conscience protections effectively would rid healthcare of doctors, nurses and other health professionals who rely upon those protections. Polling indicates that ethically driven physicians will leave medicine altogether, avoid the Ob-Gyn specialty or restrict their practices rather than compromise their consciences.[2] The results of nationwide polling by The Polling Company, Inc., for Freedom2Care in 2009:

·       Over nine of ten (91%) faith-based physicians agreed, "I would rather stop practicing medicine altogether than be forced to violate my conscience."

·       "When asked how rescission of the [Bush-era] conscience rule would affect them personally, fully 82% said it was either 'very' or 'somewhat' likely that they personally would limit the scope of their practice of medicine. This was true of 81% of medical professionals who practice mainly in rural areas and 86% who work full-time in serving poor and medically-underserved populations."

·       33% of faith-based physicians surveyed "Considered not pursuing a career in a particular medical specialty because of attitudes prevalent in that specialty that is not considered tolerant of your moral, ethical or religious beliefs." Of those 33%, 81% identified Ob-Gyn as the intolerant specialty.

Given these risks, on what grounds do Emanuel and Stahl justify removing conscience rights from physicians?

Essay 13: "Choose, you lose" scheme threatens all ethical professionals

 If abortion activists can eliminate conscience protections,
then health professionals can be forced to participate in abortion.

The increasingly aggressive discrimination in recent years against religious and pro-life healthcare professionals and students[1] parallels a concentrated effort by abortion proponents to undermine the rationale for conscience protections in healthcare. Desperate abortion advocates apparently have concluded that the way to counter the medical community's resistance to abortion is through coercion.

Essay 12: Can transgender activism silence science?

Drastic? "The Trump administration is
considering narrowly defining gender
as a biological, immutable condition
determined by genitalia at birth...."
Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

The New York Times recently published apparently leaked information about plans at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to adjust a 2016 transgender mandate. The adjustment involves reverting to the original Congressional statutory meaning of "sex discrimination" as discrimination based on biological sex.

Essay 11: The pursuit of truth—not politics—should guide research

Paralleling politics, an  intense conflict rages
in the scientific and research community.

Editor's Note: This is the 11th essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left.

The contentious confirmation hearing of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh mirrored a less outwardly raucous, though equally intense, conflict in the scientific and research community. Our country, our culture and the scientific community appear at a crossroads. We are determining the extent to which objectivity, evidence and reason--as opposed to bias, ideology and emotion--will shape our conclusions and our policies.

Essay 10: Conscience freedom extends from campus to career

Atty. Gen. Sessions: religious liberty threats
"must be confronted and defeated."

Editor's Note: This is the tenth essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left.

I recently attended a U.S. Department of Justice conference headlined by remarks by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on religious freedom. [i]

The Attorney General pointedly addressed the false notion, advocated in recent years by abortion advocates including some in the medical community, that professionals automatically sacrifice their Constitutional freedoms when they choose their profession:

Essay 9: Intolerance of conscience threatens diversity in medicine

Editor's Note: This is the ninth essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left.

In their commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine,[i] Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and Professor Ronit Stahl argue for discontinuing the historic policy of tolerating a diversity of ethical convictions among health professionals. Emanuel and Stahl urge dismissing conscience legal protections for health professionals, maligning such protections as merely "legislative tools that are used to insulate professionals from performing tasks that they personally deem objectionable."[ii]

In their view, conscience protections essentially function as an instrument of class warfare, a bourgeois oppression of the proletariat. A tool by which wealthy, selfish physicians dominate their poor, powerless patients.

Emanuel and Stahl decree that upon
entering the profession, physicians
sacrifice conscience and
individual medical judgement.

Essay 8: Abortion and sex issues incite opposition to conscience freedom rule

Editor's Note: This is the eighth essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left.

In an April 2018 editorial published in The Hill[i] protesting the conscience freedom protection rule proposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)[ii], American Nurses Association president Pamela Cipriano and American Academy of Nursing president Karen Cox outline the typical "no tolerance" policy of conscience freedom opponents. As usual, they cite a "duty to patients" that allegedly overrides any other moral or ethical obligation, most notably the Hippocratic oath, biblical principles and pro-life conscience convictions.

Essay 7: Conscience freedoms protect against ideological agendas

Editor's Note: This is the seventh essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left.

With pro-life individuals increasingly targeted,
conscience laws can help protect both
patients and professionals from discrimination.

On January 26, 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) proposed a conscience protection rule designed to enforce and educate regarding "a long history of providing conscience-based protections for individuals and entities with objections to certain activities based on religious belief and moral convictions. "[i]

The rule specifically cited over two dozen existing federal statutes protecting the exercise of conscience in healthcare, both for patients and professionals. Included in the laws are:

·      

Essay 6: New HHS division, conscience freedom laws and policies protect patients and physicians

The new HHS division implements 25 federal conscience laws

Editor's Note: This is the sixth essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left.
In January 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced the creation of a new division within its Office of Civil Rights—the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.[i] The new division now serves as a center for information on 25 federal conscience laws, outlined on the division's website, including:[ii]

Essay 5: Are healthcare conscience laws needed?

Editor's Note: This is the fifth essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left. 

Someone forwarded to me a Facebook comment about the news that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had established a new division to address conscience and religious freedom in healthcare.

"So I just read this article and can't really even wrap my head around this. Perhaps because of my personal and professional opinion I cannot understand how this 'division' was created. I would love to hear the opinions of other professionals. I promise I am not trying to troll or create controversy, but simply attempting to understand how opting out of providing medical care or performing procedures despite the medical need/request can coexist with our professional ethics and obligations."

Essay 4: "Patient autonomy" – The Trojan Horse assault on conscience freedom in healthcare

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] 

Essay 3: Medical ethics: Bedrock oaths versus zeitgeist barometers

Editor's Note: This is the third essay in a series on conscience in healthcare, by Freedom2Care Director Jonathan Imbody. For the other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" on Topics at left. 
On the heels of World War II, with medical ethics in the spotlight following unconscionable Nazi atrocities, the World Medical Association (WMA) decided that the Hippocratic oath, which had guided medicine since around 500 BC, needed to be replaced. So the Association developed a new oath that contained some of the principles of the ancient oath but opened the door to continual modernizing.

Essay 2: Autonomy quickly translates to tyranny

Do the rights of patients in healthcare
trump everyone else's rights?

Note: This excerpt is the second in a series of essays on conscience in healthcare, by Jonathan Imbody, Vice President for Government Relations of the Christian Medical Association and Director of Freedom2Care. For other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" under Topics, at left.

In a New England Journal of Medicine piece entitled, "Physicians, Not Conscripts — Conscientious Objection in Health Care,"[i] Obamacare architect Dr. Emanuel Ezekiel and professor Ronit Stahl assert that the "rights of patients" in healthcare trump everyone else's rights. But why? On what basis?

Essay 1: Weaponizing "the patient comes first" eliminates ethical protections and professional judgment

Note: This excerpt is the first in a series of essays on conscience in healthcare, by Jonathan Imbody, Vice President for Government Relations of the Christian Medical Association and Director of Freedom2Care. For other essays, click "ConscienceEssay" under Topics, at left.

Obamacare architect Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and University of Pennsylvania professor Ronit Stahl advocate barring from medicine all physicians who would decline a patient's demand for morally controversial services such as abortion.