Over at First Things, I have an article detailing just a sampling of the many ongoing attempts in law, regulation, and the courts to drive sanctity of life out of medicine.
For example:
- Washington State pharmacists can be excused from carrying Plan B contraception–which may act as an abortifacient–for business reasons, but not conscience reasons.
- The ACLU has filed several lawsuits designed to force Catholic hospitals to violate Catholic moral teaching.
- In California, pro-life crisis pregnancy centers are forced to advertise for abortion, but abortion clinics don’t have a concomitant obligation to provide information where pro-life counseling can be obtained.
- Vermont doctors are required to counsel on the availability of assisted suicide to patients even if they are morally or religiously opposed to doctor-prescribed death.
These and other such cases have a purpose: To stack the deck by harnessing healthcare public policy as a means of imposing a nation-wide, anti-sanctity-of-life ideology on all of society.
I conclude:
This is the message being sent by the secularist attempt to stifle medical conscience: Sanctity of life has no place in healthcare. If you are pro-life, get out of medicine. If these legal and regulatory efforts succeed, only those who willingly cooperate with the culture of death will be welcomed in the medical field.
Imagine, being unable to find a doctor who is unwilling to kill. How scary is that?
Driving Sanctity of Life Out of Medicine