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NRL News
Doctors’
Conscientious Objection to Abortion Threatened Criticism continues to mount in the wake of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (ACOG) November 2007 report calling for limits on the right of health care workers to conscientiously object to abortion. Opinions issued by ACOG influence the process for doctors seeking licenses and certification in their medical specialty. In January, the organization that certifies ob/gyn specialists, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG), issued new regulations that tie recertification to compliance with the ACOG ethics board’s opinions. “This is a raw power play to cripple, and ultimately eliminate from practice, those doctors who hold a conscience conviction on the sanctity of human life, and refuse to have a part in doing, or referring for, the elective, deliberate taking of an unborn human life,” the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists wrote in a February 20 statement. The pro-life group “objects strenuously to this attempt by a professional medical organization (ACOG), using ‘ethics violations’ and ‘denial of recertification’ as a battering ram to force pro-life doctors into pro-choice compliance.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt wrote to ABOG in March seeking assurance that pro-life doctors will still be able to refuse to participate in or refer for abortions without putting their certification in jeopardy. Leavitt stated clearly that if the board refused to allow doctors to conscientiously object to abortion it would violate the law. “Congress has protected the rights of physicians and other health care professionals by passing two non-discrimination laws and annually re-newing an appropriations rider that protect the rights, including conscience rights, of health care professionals in programs or facilities conducted or supported by federal funds,” Leavitt wrote to ABOG executive director Norman F. Gant. “I am concerned that the actions taken by ACOG and ABOG could result in the denial or revocation of Board certification of a physician who—but for his or her refusal, for example, to refer a patient for an abortion—would be certified,” Leavitt continued. “In particular, I am concerned that such actions by these entities would violate federal laws against discrimination.” “Secretary Leavitt should be commended for defending federal laws protecting the conscience rights of physicians,” Deirdre McQuade, spokesperson on pro-life issues for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a March 19 statement. “[W]omen and men, physicians and non-physicians, have a fundamental right not to be forced to participate in actions they believe are gravely wrong, especially actions involving the taking of an innocent human life.” |