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Health care providers in Michigan and Wisconsin may receive legal sanction to refuse to participate in abortions or other procedures that violate their consciences, if pending bills pass. Sadly, some are decrying a doctor's right to act morally.

In Wisconsin, Governor Jim Doyle has said he will veto the bill that passed the state Assembly 56-35 and the state Senate 20-13. Doyle says, "You're moving into very dangerous precedent where doctors make moral decisions on what medical care they'll provide." So, he's saying that without this law doctors shouldn't make moral decisions?

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the bill also allows a doctor not to inform patients of treatments that might violate the doctor's conscience. "Doctors could refuse to deliver information about or perform procedures involving abortion, sterilization, human embryos, and fetal tissue or organs." The Journal-Sentinel doesn't tell readers when or how often such objectionable procedures are the only means to treat patients, but it does tell the story of one woman who had an abortion because she developed "a serious blood condition that her doctor said could kill her." As if doctors who refuse to perform abortions because they believe it is murder would give a patient with a life-threatening condition no other treatment options.

In Michigan, the state house voted along partisan lines to give doctors the same kind of discretion. The bills would "protect health care workers and insurers from being fired or sued for refusing to perform a procedure, fill a prescription or cover treatment for something they object to for moral, ethical or religious reasons," according to the Associated Press. The bill does not give pharmacists freedom to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions.

The Michigan Catholic Conference backed the four bills, which give doctors as well as insurers and hospitals the freedom not to perform abortions or other objectionable procedures. Possibly, the California Supreme Court decision forcing Catholic Charities's health plan to pay for birth control had something to do with the Michigan Catholic Conference pushing for the bills.

As in Wisconsin, opponents of the bill pled the slippery slope. "[O]pponents of the bills said they're worried they would allow providers to refuse service for any reason. For example, they said emergency medical technicians could refuse to answer a call from the residence of a gay couple because they don't approve of homosexuality." One gay legislator alarmingly said, "Are you telling me that a health care provider can deny me medical treatment because of my sexual orientation? I hope not."

Though legislators said that nothing in the bill would deny medical care to anyone, the AP speculates that doctors just might refuse medical service to a homosexual—a ridiculous assertion—as if Christian doctors would refuse to treat gang members or prostitutes or any other sinner. The AP should know better.

More on abortion and life ethics:

• A call to arms by abortion rights groups | For the first time in 12 years, a coalition of abortion rights advocates will hold what they hope will be a major march in Washington on Sunday, trying to return the issue to the forefront of American politics — and to highlight what they contend is the Bush administration's extremism. (New York Times)
  
  
• Women's marchers, city gear up for mega-rally | Hundreds of thousands of women's rights activists ranging from soccer moms to Hollywood actors are traveling on everything from cars to buses to special "teach-in" trains headed to Washington Sunday for their first major rally in the capital in 12 years. (Washington Post)
  
  

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April (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48