Today's subject is a superb analysis written by Prof. Robert P. George, "Aborting Conscience." But just a preliminary word first on another topic.

Time magazine's Washington Bureau chief Jay Carney has been tabbed to be Vice President-elect Joe Biden's director of communications, according to politico.com. There was the usual just-a-new-challenge humdrum, but an unnamed official had it just right:

"There are those on the right who will see this as the embodiment of their assertions about the media and Obama, and this is just making it official." You think?

Prof. George's "Aborting Conscience" can be found at www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2008.12.09_George_Robert%20P._Aborting%20Conscience_.xml . Let me make just three points, after quoting the preface to Prof. George's observation:

"On September 11, 2008, the President's Council on Bioethics heard testimony by Anne Lyerly, M.D., chair of the Committee on Ethics of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG). Dr. Lyerly appeared in connection with the Council's review of her committee's Opinion (No. 385) entitled 'Limits of Conscientious Refusal in Reproductive Medicine.' That Opinion proposes that physicians in the field of women's health be required as a matter of ethical duty to refer patients for abortions and sometimes even to perform abortions themselves. Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics, asked Council member and Princeton professor Robert P. George to respond to the ACOG Ethics Committee's Opinion. The article … is based on Professor George's remarks at the Council meeting."

Those three points are:

#1. "Those responsible for the report purport to be speaking as physicians and medical professionals," George writes. "The special authority the report is supposed to have derives from their standing and expertise as physicians and medical professionals, yet at every point that matters, the judgments offered reflect their philosophical, ethical, and political judgments, not any expertise they have by virtue of their training and experience in science and medicine." In fact, the report is blatantly partisan.

#2. The ACOG committee's report has the key moral component backwards. Being free not to be involved in abortions does not mean that physicians are "imposing their beliefs" on patients. "The truth is that the physician or the pharmacist who declines to dispense coerces no one. He or she, that physician or pharmacist, simply refuses to participate in the destruction of human life--the life of the child in utero."

It is "those responsible for the report and its recommendations [who] evidently would use coercion to force physicians and pharmacists who have the temerity to dissent from their philosophical and ethical views either to get in line or go out of business," George points out. If the report's advice were followed, "their fields of medical practice would be cleansed of pro-life physicians whose convictions required them to refrain from performing or referring for abortions." So, the question before the house is, "in truth, who in this debate is guilty of intolerance? Who is favoring coercion? Who is imposing their values?"

#3. For me the most interesting part of the report is the area George addresses in his conclusion. It is the report's bizarre idea (my words) that involvement in abortion (say by being forced to refer) "need not be conceptualized as a repudiation or compromise of one's own values, but instead can be seen as an acknowledgment of both the widespread and thoughtful disagreement among physicians and society at large and the moral sincerity of others with whom one disagrees." Does that make any sense to you?

Figuring this out is not splitting the atom on your home workbench. If I refuse to be involved in abortions and you feel comfortable doing so, then you do them and I won't.

Abortion is legal. I can't stop you as a physician from wasting your skills, but you oughtn't to be able to force me to do what my conscience believes (to borrow from George) is "immoral, unjust, and even homicidal."

Consistency never has been the pro-abortionist's strong suit, but even they ought to be able to grasp that "freedom to choose" ought to include a physician's or pharmacist's freedom to choose to follow their conscience.

Please send your thoughts to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Part Two -- Order your copies of "Stop Obama's Abortion Agenda"