Michelle Gress, J.D.

CONSCIENCE RIGHTS AND LIBERTY—
WHO'S REALLY "PRO-CHOICE"?

The highly acclaimed German film, “The Lives of Others,” is a tremendous story about life in pre-Glasnost East Berlin, under the highly oppressive German Democratic Republic (GDR). The East German secret police, the Stasi, are in firm control of the country, and a famous, talented playwright is suspected of disloyalty to the communist regime. His apartment is bugged and he is placed under round-the-clock surveillance. A ranking Stasi officer, desirous of the playwright’s girlfriend, compels her to spy on her lover by threatening to ruin her successful career as an actress. This violence against the woman’s conscience – to act contrary to her very core in order to maintain her successful career – is an engrossing and painful human drama.  

In contrast to the fearful and oppressed environment of East Germany, we live in a vibrant democratic system, where we enjoy personal freedom and political liberty. But this system requires vigilance to maintain the liberties that are essential for democracy to flourish.

The debate over conscience rights in health care is analogous to the vignette described above. Conscience rights protect the health care worker from doing violence to their own deeply held loyalties and their core beliefs. Though society at large might disagree with them, if their conscience rights are protected, they will not have to fear that they will be compelled to act against themselves in order to maintain their livelihood. Indeed, this is an integral and critical aspect of a healthy – and free – society.

On August 21, the Bush Administration published proposed regulations, which are now subject to a 30-day public comment period, that seek to secure providers’ conscience rights. The proposed regulations ensure compliance with existing federal laws that protect provider conscience. Nothing more. But you wouldn’t know that from the screeching, frothing, the-world-will-end vitriol pouring forth from abortion-advocacy groups.

Characteristically, under the banner of “choice,” abortion advocacy organizations are fighting tooth-and-nail against allowing health care professionals the choice about whether or not they will participate in activities they find morally abhorrent.

This oppressive position by abortion advocates – again, under the self-branded label “pro-choice” – also denies Americans the option to select a physician who shares their moral values, the option to choose treatment at the hands of a professional who refuses to use their trade as a means of taking innocent human life through abortion.

Finally, without legal protections allowing them to exercise their conscience, many talented professionals may leave the health care field altogether, or choose not to enter health care work in the first place, leaving the strained health care system that much poorer.

Will these regulations that protect provider conscience impair a woman’s ability to obtain prescription birth control, or abort her child? Get real. This mantra of abortion advocates is a canard. Certainly, no current abortionist is working against his conscience. And consumers enjoy bounteous ease in obtaining prescriptions of any kind. In the rarest and most extreme case, someone might have to go to another pharmacy to get their birth control pill or their abortion drug. This is hardly shocking, life-impairing or oppressive.

It is oppressive to force someone who has chosen a profession of healing to compromise their own conscience in order to practice their trade. Measure this against the possibility that some embarrassment may come to a woman in the rare circumstance that her pharmacist will not fulfill her prescription. There is no comparison.

The proposed regulations do not go into effect until after consideration of public comments submitted to HHS. Therefore, it is truly important for citizens who agree that providers should enjoy conscience protections to submit a comment on the matter. One’s comment can be very short, or extensive. But it is vitally important for HHS to hear from concerned citizens that health care workers should not have to violate their most deeply held convictions in order to serve the public.

Thank God, we do not live under the terrifying regime of the GDR. But without vigilance to protect our sacred liberties, we risk allowing a type of coercive oppression well-known to the Stasi command