Conscience rights for abortionists? According to a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine, that’s exactly what we need.
The article, Recognizing Conscience in Abortion Provision, by Lisa H Harris, MD, PhD, makes two main points.
The first is that abortionists may feel morally compelled to perform abortions and that they do so in the face of “stigma, marginalization within medicine, harassment and threat of physical harm.” She says that they continue to offer “… abortion care because deeply held, core ethical beliefs compel them to do so.”
>Her second point is so odd that it comes close to being incomprehensible. She says that the fact that people don’t see the “conscientious” quality of abortionists’ work leads to legal discrimination. This discrimination occurs when we only provide conscience protections for those who do not wish to be forced to perform abortions against their will. She seems to feel that we should also provide some sort of legal conscience protection for abortionists.
Her bizarre line of reasoning verges on the comical. I suppose a thicket of laws protecting abortionists and the law enforcement apparatus of the nation backing those laws just isn’t enough “conscience protection” for abortionists. At least not in Dr Harris’ viewpoint.
However, in spite of its dubious reasoning, I still take this article somewhat seriously. Proponents of the culture of death have a long history of getting absurd articles published in prestigious academic and professional publications and then spring-boarding those absurd articles into serious demands for whatever the article seeks to justify. These dippy-sounding articles provide the gravitas to the ideas they push to build pressure for legislative proposals and social acceptance of their ideas. In this way, the bizarre fantasy that was published in a prestigious journal becomes in time the horrible reality that our whole society has to live with.
I think it’s possible that this article is the opening move in a gambit to attack the concept of conscience protection from a new angle. The whole of idea of freedom of conscience appears to be anathema to the people who push the culture of death. It’s more than just a tactical problem for them in the culture wars. The idea that people of faith and those who value the sanctity of human life refuse to accede their freedom of conscience seems to enrage them. There’s something almost obsessive in the way they react to it.
The article says in part:
The moral contours of positive claims of conscience require further elaboration, since they have implications for many other arenas of health care and research in which workers may be conscience-bound to do something — for example, physician-assisted suicide or stem-cell investigation. (emphasis added)
I think it’s interesting that Dr Harris brings both physician-assisted suicide and stem-cell “investigation” into the article. That seems to indicate that she foresees broadening this argument to apply to them. In that case, “conscience” arguments might be used to advocate for changes in the law to allow euthanasia or to broaden the vast amounts of money already going to embryonic stem cell research. They might become a “their conscience requires them to kill their patients, so the law must allow and help them to do it” line of argument.
I know that sounds a little far-fetched. But remember, she’s already applying that line of reasoning to abortionists, who are killing one of their patients every time their consciences require them to do another abortion.
My concerns about the implications of this article are based on nothing more than my guess. I may be wrong. But I think the line of thinking expressed in this article is something pro-life people should watch closely.
Recognizing Conscience in Abortion Provision may be found here.
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