Last Friday, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed into law the Orwellianly-named Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which in fact strips away conscience rights with respect to abortion.
You wouldn’t know it from the Chicago Tribune, though, or any other Chicago news outlet, because it’s apparently not newsworthy. I only saw it in a facebook item from a pro-life group, and had to hunt around for details.
The law itself? Its supporters painted it as wholly reasonable because it doesn’t force any provider to actually perform an abortion. And they have a sympathetic victim to point to, a woman named Mindy whose water broke when she was 20 weeks pregnant. The doctors at the Catholic hospital she went to for treatment, following Catholic hospital protocol, would not induce labor/perform an abortion but instead (apparently) wanted to wait, and reportedly wouldn’t transfer her medical records to a non-Catholic hospital so that she was unable to get insurance approval for the procedure elsewhere. Now, it seems to me that it should be standard procedure to transfer medical records, and it shouldn’t have made a difference in any case — I fail to understand how the second hospital would have been unable to diagnose her.
(In the end, she was induced and delivered a stillborn child at 27 weeks, so the complaint is that she shouldn’t have had to experience the bleeding, discomfort, and worry in the meantime.)
But rather than requiring that these two problems be remedied — providing a smooth transfer of records, and requiring cooperation from a receiving hospital even absent records — abortion advocates used her case for a breathtakingly-broad law.
Here are the key bits:
(1) The health care facility, physician, or health care
personnel shall inform a patient of the patient’s
condition, prognosis, legal treatment options, and risks
and benefits of the treatment options in a timely manner,
consistent with current standards of medical practice or
care.(2) When a health care facility, physician, or health
care personnel is unable to permit, perform, or participate
in a health care service that is a diagnostic or treatment
option requested by a patient because the health care
service is contrary to the conscience of the health care
facility, physician, or health care personnel, then the
patient shall either be provided the requested health care
service by others in the facility or be notified that the
health care will not be provided and be referred,
transferred, or given information in accordance with
paragraph (3).(3) If requested by the patient or the legal
representative of the patient, the health care facility,
physician, or health care personnel shall: (i) refer the
patient to, or (ii) transfer the patient to, or (iii)
provide in writing information to the patient about other
health care providers who they reasonably believe may offer
the health care service the health care facility,
physician, or health personnel refuses to permit, perform,
or participate in because of a conscience-based objection.
And
(a) “Health care” means any phase of patient care,
including but not limited to, testing; diagnosis; prognosis;
ancillary research; instructions; family planning,
counselling, referrals, or any other advice in connection with
the use or procurement of contraceptives and sterilization or
abortion procedures; medication; or surgery or other care or
treatment rendered by a physician or physicians, nurses,
paraprofessionals or health care facility, intended for the
physical, emotional, and mental well-being of persons;(b) “Physician” means any person who is licensed by the
State of Illinois under the Medical Practice Act of 1987;(c) “Health care personnel” means any nurse, nurses’ aide,
medical school student, professional, paraprofessional or any
other person who furnishes, or assists in the furnishing of,
health care services;(d) “Health care facility” means any public or private
hospital, clinic, center, medical school, medical training
institution, laboratory or diagnostic facility, physician’s
office, infirmary, dispensary, ambulatory surgical treatment
center or other institution or location wherein health care
services are provided to any person, including physician
organizations and associations, networks, joint ventures, and
all other combinations of those organizations;
So clearly this is written for these “threatened miscarriage” cases, where Catholic policy prevents women from a quick “get it over with” abortion. (See here for links, at the bottom of the article.) Following the new legislation, a doctor is now required to tell a patient, “you could go over to Hospital X and have an abortion, and I’ll arrange the transfer paperwork,” no matter their or their hospital’s conscience-held beliefs. Which is already a violation of conscience.
But the text is even broader.
The first paragraph above says,
The health care facility, physician, or health care personnel shall inform a patient of the patient’s condition, prognosis, legal treatment options, and risks and benefits of the treatment options in a timely manner, consistent with current standards of medical practice or care.
As written, I don’t see anything that restricts this to scenarios of miscarriage putting a woman’s health at risk, and the question of weather you abort or wait. The text seems like it could just as easily cover any scenario in which a pregnancy test is positive, both at a doctor’s office and at a crisis pregnancy clinic, so long as, in the latter case, a “health care service” is provided. In any such case, according to the law, the provider would be required to state, “you can have an abortion if you wish; here are the risks and benefits and a referral.”
And before you say, “It won’t hold up in court,” consider that Clinton has promised to appoint justices who will take the broadest possible view of abortion rights.
Image: Bruce Rauner at a 4th of July parade, own work.
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