Forced Speech: Pushing Against Conscientious Objection by Medical Practioners to Abortion in California
The following post will be about abortion and conscientious objection thereto by medical professionals. But it could just as easily be about assisted suicide, or using embryonic stem cell therapies, or pulling feeding tubes, because the principles are the same--as are the reasons for the attempted coercion of medical professionals to cooperate with life terminating medical procedures.
I have been reporting that doctors and other medical professionals who wish to hold to an orthodox Hippocratic view of medical professionalism are going to increasingly be forced by law to either be complicit in these actions or become podiatrists. The most blunt method of destroying Hippocratic medicine in this manner is the new Victoria, Australia law requiring doctors to either perform an abortion upon request, or find another doctor for the patient who will. That requires a doctor to have blood on his or her hands (from the conscientious objector's POV) regardless of their moral beliefs regarding abortion.
A more common form of coercion is to require doctors to provide information to patients about the availability of procedures that intentionally kill a human being. The latest example of such legislation is SB 374 in California, that would make it a crime not to provide patients with information about the legality or availability of abortion, and which could also be grounds for stripping the doctor or nurse practitioner of their license to practice. Worse, if the professional has a conscience objection, he or she must still participate in ensuring that the patient receives detailed information about deciding whether or not to have an abortion. From the legislation:
SEC. 4. Section 123462 of the Health and Safety Code is amended to read:...(e) Each physician and surgeon, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant described in subdivision (d) has an affirmative duty of reasonable disclosure to his or her patient of all available medical choices with respect to the patient's personal reproductive decisions. Failure of a physician and surgeon, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant to fulfill this duty shall constitute unprofessional conduct and grounds for suspension of the licensee's license, unless all of the following circumstances exists: (1) The licensee refuses on moral or religious grounds to provide disclosure pertaining to an available medical choice. (2) The licensee immediately informs the patient, either orally or in writing, that other medical choices may be available.(3) The licensee promptly assists the patient in finding a licensee who will fully fulfill the duty of reasonable disclosure to the patient.Let's skip the preliminaries and get right to the real point: The purpose of such legislation is not to make sure women know they have the right to an abortion. How can anyone not know? Besides, a woman need only look in the Yellow Pages, go to a Planned Parenthood or high school health clinic, or do a Google search to find more information about abortion than can be absorbed. And don't be surprised if we follow the lead of the UK, where abortion clinics may soon be allowed to advertise on television.
No, this bill isn't about informing patients. Rather, its coercive purposes are (at least) threefold: First, to control thinking. Second, to drive Hippocratic professionals out medicine and sweep aside the penetrating message their non cooperation in killing in the medical context sends. Third, to win an important battle primarily about the symbolism that a victory achieved over dissenters would send to medical professionals and the society alike. And don't be surprised when laws are passed preventing the medical professional from giving an opinion about the moral propriety of such decisions. I mean, if you are going to control speech, control speech.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The culture of death brooks no dissent.
Labels: Culture of Death. Conscience Clause. Coercing Complicity in Killing in the Medical Context.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 4:39 PM
13 Comments
13 Comments:
Even a podiatrist is expected to give his or her patients complete medical information. The point is, medical boards determine what is proper professional practice, not the individual practitioners. Practicing medicine in a given jurisdiction is a privilege, not a right, and retaining that privilege depends upon following the rules. All rules are coercive to some extent, like it or not. If some doctors don't want to play by the rules for the profession in their jurisdiction, then they ought to consider becoming philosophers or televangelists instead. You can't simply pick and choose which rules you're going to observe. You may not personally believe in keeping speed limits, but I can assure you that if you're caught speeding enough times your driver's license will be suspended, perhaps revoked.
That's interesting because in other contexts, e.g. health care rationing, we are hearing that doctors should be allowed to not disclose all treatments based on resource conservation.
Also, many legislators resist requiring doctors to tell women, for example, about the details of fetal development or seeing an ultara sound.
But my objection here is not about abortion per se. It is about forcing physicians to be complicit in taking human life. And, if it okay in abortion, it will also be okay in euthanasia. That's where all of these kinds of laws are pointing.
I don't mind #2 in the bill. But #3is past the line.
Besides, it isn't about the information. It is about coercion.
"Practicing medicine in a given jurisdiction is a privilege, not a right, and retaining that privilege depends upon following the rules. All rules are coercive to some extent, like it or not."
Some where else in history doctors were just following the rules. And when they were finished they were part of a system that killed over six million people.
Viola: Bravo.
HW: You can NOT compare the medical issues in podiatry with those involved in abortion or euthanasia. You can not. There is a fundamental dividing line you have crossed when you are talking about living human beings, and (in the case of abortion, if you want to cast as wide a net as possible) the growing human that a woman is carrying, or even that was created in a lab.
You are predictable yet again in your arguments by analogy, which-- aside from being the weakest kind of argument-- in this case fall down every time because of the difference between a moral objection to the patient's own lifestyle (like refusing to treat an alcoholic) and deep philosophical objection to certain procedures which affect the existence of an entirely new or separate life. Which some consider murder.
Would you like the state to tell you to assist in a life-stopping procedure, or some other one that would go against your professional or personal ethics, and that if you didn't you would be fired from your job and never able to do that work again?
Also, I would LOVE to see abortion clinics advertise on tv. Why not? Bring that crap out into the open, instead of hiding it discreetly in the yellow pages. The euphamism and flowery language that would be involved would be stomach-churning. Just right for tv.
Do I understand correctly, Wesley, that this hasn't passed? It has been introduced? Any take on its chances of passing?
An ill omen, even if it doesn't pass.
Among all the other things, part of the bizarre nature of this is that many OB-Gyn doctors work mostly with women who are not at all considering abortion. The women go to them for pre-natal care. Consider how freaky it will be if and when every happy mother who has just gotten a positive pregnancy test and gone in for her first checkup has to sign a statement (to keep her obstetrician from losing his license) that says he's given her "information" about abortion as an "alternative" to, you know, having the baby!
It has not yet passed. I don't know its prospects.
We're currently involved with similar legislation here in Illinois. My local rep is cosponsoring a bill that would [potentially] a) lift all state funding restrictions from abortion and b) require conscientiously objecting health care professionals to become complicit in the act by issuing "referrals".
Practicing health care is a priviledge - as is receiving healthcare. There is no "right to healthcare", let alone abortion, as the extremists would have us think. My "right" to abortion is quite similar to my "right" to a gun. It is my right to attempt to obtain one, but it is not my right to receive one. A physician refusing to participate in my abortion does not negate my right, it means I must look elsewhere.
Viola, I agree with Lanthe. Bravo. I think what you said was pretty near to an exact quote at some trial.
I don't support point 2 of the legislation. The right of conscience is pretty fundamental to me. I suspect the first amendment is toast if this passes. It will be there, but have no meaning. The totalitarian urge to silence dissent is growing. We are two nations at war with each other in one nation.
What a way to solve the health provider crisis, get rid of all the Christians and holder to Hippocrates. Get rid of people who value every human life and reject utilitarianism. Health care will be like abortion care-find untrained people off the street, pay them a buck more than minimum wage. Give them on the job training. That will make people trust their medical provider.
It's amazing how totalitarian the advocates of "tolerance" are. They tolerate their way. That's about it. They are the new fundamentalists and the new Taliban-American style.
I'm much struck by the vagueness of this law. How could a doctor tell if he had satisfied its requirements? It isn't actually possible to list _all_ possible medical options. I don't imagine someone is going to get in trouble if he doesn't tell a pregnant woman--out of the blue, when she isn't even expressing any back pain--that if she _does_ have back pain, she can go to a chiropractor. Similarly, if a woman doesn't express any desire for an abortion, how can he get in trouble for not "affirmatively" suggesting one to her? It isn't even a service she's looking for. Since the law cannot be literally fulfilled--the doctor cannot literally list all the possible services and treatments and procedures the woman _might_ want or _could_ access at some point in her pregnancy, how can the doctor lose his license for not mentioning abortion, specifically?
If only they were taught and understood that ethics and the professions all belong to the ninth house...
I'm not sure this ilk even would get it, but at least try to get it into their heads at the same time they're learning to read and write and add and subtract and do long division and learn the multiplication tables...oh, wait, they don't do that any more, do they, they use computers...those are the younger ones, so that it's easier for them not to think and they haven't been taught how, and they accept the nonsense and elected Obama, and the older ones learned the regular way -- but without learning the moral science of astrology, which was around when science WAS science and made its fundamental greatest achievements.
Current science is in a way like current cars, made of plastic and about to run on corn that starving people need to eat; a car is supposed to be made of steel and smell like gasoline, darn it. A gas station is supposed to have an attendant in a uniform who pumps the gas and cleans the windshield and checks the oil, not be at a convenience store. A doctor is supposed to...well, we all know how they are supposed to be, instead of being arrogant twits in hospitals and in offices that are run like businesses. It's no more fun for those who belong in the medical profession to try to practice medicine than it is to drive something made of plastic with computers in it and have to get gas at the same place as coffee and milk (and how healthy is that anyway?). DARN IT!! All these things are not discrete. There's no civilization any more; of course medicine has no ethics any more.
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