The State versus individual conscience: pressuring pharmacists to disregard ethical limits

Illinois can't force dispensing 'morning-after' pill - chicagotribune.com

Freedom2Care

Should the state really have power to force You to do things that violate Your conscience? The military accommodates -not punishes- soldiers who refuse to kill as "conscientious objectors". Should this principle not apply to the professions as well, so that individuals are not pressured to do what they believe is evil?

Imagine Yourself a doctor... Suppose Your hospital directs You to euthanize -kill- a patient, and You, having vowed as a doctor to heal and never to kill, know that euthanasia violates Your deepest convictions of conscience. Do You really want the state to pressure You to do what You believe is wrong, even murderous?

Practicing a profession does not and should not mean that You blindly subordinate Your conscience to every government dictate.

What if the state were to mandate that grade school teachers must regularly display pornographic movies to their students? Would You, as a teacher, consent to this? What individual, upon entering a profession, agrees to abandon personal ethics and refuses to exercise discerning judgment when pressured by colleagues, employers, and bureaucrats to do what is controversial or blatantly immoral? No, a person of good will and integrity does not consent to carry out actions that he believes are fundamentally wrong, and no just government attempts to force individuals to do so.

A nation that tries to compel its citizens to do evil is a nation with a dark, inhuman future.

People who want the state to have such coercive power have been seduced by statism and fascism, despotic forces making a renewed and frightening assault upon the United States. These forces and their supporters must be firmly opposed.

Statist senators work to silence the nation's conscience

Senate Rejects Amendment Protecting Abortion-Conscience Rights for Doctors

Illinois Senators Durbin and Burris have voted to deny medical workers the right to refuse performing acts that violate their conscience. They support a despotic vision of society in which citizens are threatened with legal penalties if they refuse to commit the abhorrent act of killing an unborn child or other acts which violate their basic beliefs and conscience.

Senators Durbin and Burris have brought disgrace and shame on themselves for this cowardly and evil prostitution of their own conscience for the sake of political power.

In particular, shame on the many Catholic senators who voted to reject the amendment:
Begich of Arkansas,
Cantwell of Washington,
Collins of Maine,
Dodd of Connecticut,
Durbin of Illinois,
Gillibrand of New York,
Harkin of Iowa,
Kaufman of Connecticut,
Kerry of Massachusetts,
Landrieu of Louisiana,
Leahy of Vermont,
McCaskill of Missouri,
Menendez of New Jersey,
Mikulski of Maryland,
Murray of Washington, and
Reed of Rhode Island.

Francis Cardinal George urges opposition to Illinois "Reproductive Health and Access Act"

Office of the Archbishop
Post Office Box 1979 Phone: (312) 534-8230
Chicago, Illinois 60690-1979 Fax: (312) 534-6379


Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

In the midst of Lent, with its drama of sin and grace, of evil and good, I write about a threat to our freedom to practice our religion in our State.

Before the Illinois General Assembly there is a proposal (HB 2354, the “Reproductive Health and Access Act”) that would remove the right to conscientious objection to abortion and related procedures for all health care workers. Thirty years ago, we were told that abortion is a rare but necessary tragedy and that abortion providers should not be legally punished. Today we are being told that abortion is a human right and that those who qualify it in any manner or who will not provide it should be legally punished.

This proposed law will drive Catholic doctors and nurses from health care and will make it impossible for Catholic hospitals to continue to be places where life is always respected, where no one is deliberately killed. In our country, we recognize conscientious objection to war, even though defending one’s country is a noble and moral act. We recognize the conscientious objection of those doctors who will not cooperate in administering the death penalty, even for terrible crimes. Why do some Illinois legislators want to take away conscientious objection to abortion?

The enemies of human life and religious freedom in Illinois are well funded. Pressure on legislators is great and is increasing. I ask you to contact your Representative this week to express your dismay that the Illinois legislature, elected democratically, would debate a bill that removes freedom of conscientious decision-making for health care workers as a condition of their employment. If, as we are told, the State should not come between a doctor and a mother, then surely all can agree that the State should not come between a health care worker and God.

We have, unfortunately, had to get used to the fact that our laws no longer protect unborn human life; now we are to get used to the fact that our laws will no longer protect conscience. In 1844, Abraham Lincoln broke with his own party, the often anti-Catholic Whigs, and proposed: “Resolved, that the guarantee of the rights of conscience, as found in our Constitution, is most sacred and inviolable, and one that belongs no less to the Catholic, than to the Protestant; and that all attempts to abridge or interfere with these rights, either of Catholic or Protestant, directly or indirectly, have our decided disapprobation, and shall ever have our most effective opposition.” Illinois HB 2354 betrays the legacy of Lincoln in his home State.

This proposed law will rend the already fragile garment of our civic unity and further alienate many from our government. Catholics and all people of good will should work to ensure its defeat. I also ask you to thank those legislators who are courageously opposing HB 2354 and to pray for those who are supporting it. To contact your legislator, please go to www.ilga.gov, or call 312-368-1066. Thank you and God bless you.

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

Oppose the Illinois State "Freedom of Choice Act"

Catholic Conference of Illinois ACTION ALERT

Illinois House Bill HB 2354 seeks to:

• make abortion a fundamental right, preventing any common-sense regulation such as parental notification;
  
• expand public funding of abortion through Medicaid during a time when the state cannot meet its current fiscal obligations;
  
• invalidate the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act protecting health care professionals and employers; and,
  
• mandate comprehensive sex education for all children in public schools.
  

Making the killing of one's unborn child a "fundamental right" is a radical attack on the truly fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, rights that belong to "all men", as affirmed in the Declaration of Independence.

Today, living, unborn children lack legal protection of these rights, much as Native Americans and negro slaves in this country 150 years ago did not enjoy a legal recognition of their human rights on par with white citizens.

Should the state of Illinois not only ignore, but march against the best currents of history, by enshrining as a "fundamental right" a legal right to kill one's offspring? And should the state go further still, denying medical professionals the right of conscience, the right to refuse to perform abortions or other procedures that believe immoral, and imposing harsh penalties on those unwilling to carry out such acts? The result will be to make even late term, partial birth abortion, a "fundamental right", and to compel those who reject the practice for profound personal reasons to carry it out.

These are powerful reasons to stop the State "Freedom of Choice Act", reasons strong enough to call for our prompt action...

Please, contact Your Illinois legislators and urge them to vote NO to HB 2354.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
-Edmund Burke

Consciencous objectors: enemies of the United Statists of America

U.S. moves to rescind healthcare conscience rule - Reuters

The Obama administration moved formally on Friday to rescind a Bush administration rule to protect health workers who refuse to provide services and information on moral grounds, which had inflamed abortion-rights advocates.

In the New Administration, it is not enough to fund federal programs to promote and provide abortion and contraception within our borders and around the world. It is not enough to fund the manipulation and destruction of human embryos in the name of scientific progress. It isn't enough -surely this is coming soon- to enforce availability of late term, partial-birth abortions, even in states which have legislated against them.

What now shall be required is the denial of legal protection for those medical professionals who refuse to provide such services because of their own personal moral objections. The federal government shall now attempt to compel medical providers to carry out procedures or dispense products they believe to be immoral, harmful, or unethical.

Pharmacists, physicians, nurses, medical technicians, and others: Your deepest convictions regarding what is ethical, Your very sense of right and wrong as it pertains to Your profession, are at stake. By executive order Your conscience has been stripped of its legal standing.

Yes, the Administration acknowledges Your right to have such convictions. But it now asserts You have no legal right to act on these convictions unless they are in accord with the policies of our central government.

Obama to require health care providers to violate their conscience

ABC News: Obama to Rescind Bush Abortion Rule

Obama's new policy will require health care providers to provide controversial services that some find morally objectionable, even when providing the service violates the moral convictions of the provider.

A legal guarantee that such services are available is about to be elevated to a legal requirement that compels people to violate their conscience. This is a terrible precedent, and will further erode the moral fabric of our country.