Conscience
Rights Under Attack
Federal
Conscience Protection
Conscience
Protection in Various States
Conscience
Protection in California
A Call to Action
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The
civil rights of people working in health care are under attack
at all levels. Individual employers discipline and even fire those
who insist on honoring their own consciences. Nurses, doctors,
pharmacists are among those who have faced unemployment because
they refused to participate in unethical “medical”
interventions.
The most recent attack
on health care conscience rights targets pharmacists. A new trend
across the nation seeks to destroy pharmacists’ ability
to decline to provide drugs that destroy human life. Thinking
that this doesn’t affect nurses and others in health care
is a serious mistake.
The legalization of
physician assisted suicide and eventually of euthanasia, coupled
with the loss of conscience rights, could mean that nurses would
be required to administer lethal drugs that doctors would be required
to prescribe to a patient who may or may not consent to being
killed.
A
few states have enacted laws protecting pharmacists but many other
states, including California, are currently entertaining legislation
that could deny pharmacists’ conscience rights.
California
along with most of the United States of America suffers from a
nursing shortage. Yet many of our legislators have expressed opinions
that people in the health professions should not be permitted
to exercise conscience. In 2006 the Chair of the California Assembly
Judiciary Committee, for example, stated that people who object
to providing any legalized services such as abortion and physician
assisted suicide if eventually legalized should not enter the
health care professions. He expressed an opinion that any patient
should be able to demand any legal service from any healthcare
professional even in violation of the provider’s conscience
and even though a patient can get the services from someone else.
He said that conscientious objectors should seek careers elsewhere.
This philosophy, put into practice, would be very damaging to
our society. It would lead to even greater nursing shortages as
droves of nurses would have to withdraw from the profession. Other
categories of health professionals would be similarly affected.
It makes absolutely
no sense to compel individuals to act against their consciences,
especially in view of shortages in various healthcare professions.
There is no freedom unless all are free. That means that the civil
rights of pharmacists, doctors, nurses, and all other healthcare
entities must be protected. No one should have a right to violate
another’s rights. A patient’s right to procure certain
services stops where that choice violates the rights of other
individuals.
The
nationwide trend of attack on conscience affects all who are involved
in the healthcare industry. An attack on one is an attack on every
one. We must stand together to protect conscience rights universally.
Even those whose ideologies differ from those of CNES should recognize
the danger to their own constitutional and civil rights should
conscience rights be abolished for some.
