Rather, the regulations are relevant to whether an organization is qualified to participate in a federal program and apply to applicants to nursing or medical schools and to hospital privileges, Doerflinger said.
Before a 1973 statute protecting applicants to medical school was passed, a congressional study found that medical students were being refused entry to medical school, Doerflinger told CNA.
Naming another threat to the freedom of conscience, he also referred to a recent case in Alaska where the state Supreme Court told a community hospital it was not allowed to have a policy against doing elective abortions.
“The court interpreted the Alaska constitution as providing right to abortion that is not only a right to be let alone, but a right to an entitlement,” declaring that everyone has an obligation to provide access to an abortion.
Explaining that a state legislative effort to overturn the decision failed by one vote, he reported the hospital was forced to provide access to its facilities for the local late-term abortionist.
General ignorance about legal rights and duties to protect conscience is another justification for the proposed regulations, Doerflinger said.
“A lot of people just don’t know these protections are out there, and they’re not respecting them.”
He cited a recent American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians (ACOG) document on the limits of conscientious objection. The document claimed OB/GYNs should consider themselves ethically obligated to provide or refer abortions and should locate their practices near abortion clinics so their patients have easier access.
“The fear among a lot of pro-life OB/GYNs was that ACOG’s ethics standards get worked into the board certification requirements for OB/GYNs to have hospital privileges. So this is very frightening. You could end up being kicked out of hospitals because you don’t subscribe to this ethics committee’s view.”
“That got the attention of the Secretary of HHS,” Doerflinger said, reporting that the secretary wrote to ACOG to inform them their ethical standards ran counter to the conscience protection policies of the federal government.
“This helped him realize that there is a need for people to know more about what is in the law. These regulations clarify what the protection is, and give them a place to go, the HHS Office of Civil Rights, if they are being discriminated against.”
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The regulations also help health programs certify to the government that they understand and respect conscience protections rights.
“The regulation doesn’t create any new rights, they’re just being ignored by some,” he stressed.
CNA asked Doerflinger to respond to the argument that conscience protection regulations force the beliefs of pharmacists or doctors on their patients.
In fact, he argued, the regulations “keep the government from forcing its preferences upon doctors.”
“Most of these statutory protections basically have to do with whether the government can go after you because you’re pro-life. It doesn’t allow the physician to do anything to his patients, it’s just that nobody can force the physician to be involved in actions which violate his conscience. It leaves everybody’s conscience free.”
“If you go to a hospital, every hospital there is, there is something people might want that it does not provide. There is a little-known fact in this debate that over 80 percent of hospitals do not do abortions as part of their regular practice.