WASHINGTON, August 14, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Concerned Women for America (CWA) is alerting members to protect their right to choose pro-life doctors by sending comments to the Health and Human Services Secretary’s blog. (https://secretarysblog.hhs.gov/)
“The Bush Administration will soon propose regulations to protect healthcare professionals from being forced to participate in immoral practices. Astonishingly, abortion proponents vehemently oppose this. They are against the right of doctors to choose not to do abortions,” noted Wendy Wright, President of CWA.
“Federal laws protect the right of healthcare providers not to participate in abortion or other controversial practices. But the laws are ignored. Recently two medical associations passed guidelines that could require doctors to commit or refer for abortions.”
In July a memo was leaked that revealed that the HHS was considering proposed guidelines that would refuse federal funding to organizations that “support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.”
The new rules as outlined in the memo would have required hospitals, clinics, researchers, medical schools, and even state and local governments who receive funding under federal health care programs to guarantee they will not discriminate against hiring doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals who have moral objections to abortion and abortifacient birth control.
The most controversial passage of the proposed regulations define abortion as “any of the various procedures – including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action – that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”
After the proposed regulations were leaked pro-abortion groups were immediately up in arms, claiming that the HHS was “redefining” contraception as abortion.
“Planned Parenthood and some media are trying to frame the new regulations as an attack on contraception,” said Wright. “On the contrary, the proposed regulations focus on the right of health professionals to follow their conscience and to ‘do no harm.’ It allows medical providers, in their professional judgment and substantiated by medical textbooks, to determine that abortion is an action that terminates a human life before or after implantation.”
“Abortion advocates are causing a ruckus about a rule that simply requires health agencies to follow the law and not to discriminate against people with moral beliefs against taking an innocent life.
“Secretary Leavitt provided an excellent explanation on his blog. It’s been flooded with negative comments from abortion advocates demanding that health providers do whatever a woman demands.
“As patients, we depend – with our lives – on health providers to be moral. But if ethical professionals with strong consciences are forced out of the profession, patients will suffer the most.”
CWA has asked members to protect their rights as patients and show their support for the regulations by adding comments to Secretary Leavitt’s blog.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Bush Administration Seeks to Forbid Federal Aid Discrimination against Pro-Life Health Care Professionals
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08071508.html
Planned Parenthood in Hysterics over Bush Memo Defining Abortifacient Contraception as Abortion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08071604.html