Conscience

It has come to my attention that our President has decided to rescind a law called the Conscience Clause. 

The Conscience clause, originally called the Church Amendment, was put into effect shortly after the Roe vs Wade case, and is supported by both political parties. It allows for medical personnel to refuse to participate in an abortion if it is against their conscience.

By rescinding this law, the message that President Obama is sending out is this…Only those who chose abortion have rights.  Those same constitutional rights, the right to choose, are not extended to everyone, but only to a few.  If Obama has his way, my constitutional right to refuse to participate in an abortion will put me in jail and I will lose my license to practice nursing.   This means that if I work for a state funded hospital or clinic (which means anyone receiving Medicaid or Medicare) I will be required to participate in a procedure that I find unethical and against everything I believe in.  This is unreal. 

I personally would rather surrender my RN license than participate in this absolulely barbaric procedure. 

Which brings health reform to a new level.  If Obama thinks he has a health care crisis now, wait until he jacks with the very doctors who lovingly provide care to millions in our country.  Or how about all the private, rural hospitals that will close their doors before being forced to perform abortions?   Talk about a health crisis.  Lord have mercy, this is huge people.

I am sure you know that doctors are required to take the Hippocratic Oath. This oath is a solemn vow taken in which the doctor promises that they will “do no harm”. Did you know that the original wording stated “I will not give a woman an abortion remedy.” You can read the modern version here and much more in this great article.

I would like to pose this dilemma to you this way: You may support choice.  You may say that it is up to the mother to decide if she wants to abort of not.  But what if you were told today ”I am 22 weeks pregnant, and I don’t want this baby.  Thank you for supporting my right to choose….now scrub up and perform my abortion.”  Yeah, it gets a bit more complicated when you put it that way. For those of you who have no medical background, it might be easier to support something you know very little about medically. It is a messy, ugly thing, and you should thank your lucky stars that you don’t have to participate in the killing of a 2nd trimester baby. Ideology gets complicated when you are forcedto participate, which is what rescinding this law will do to me. As an OB nurse, I will be forced to participate in something that I personally find unethical and morally wrong.

I am very obviously Pro-Life. I am also one of the people that this law will effect adversely. So are you. If your President is allowed to do this, your rights to expedient, reliable health care will have its scope narrowed substantially.

Please go here and sign this petition if you support my right to choose. This will not effect yourright to choose, but it will effect mine. It would be hypocritical to support a woman’s right to choose abortion, but not my right to refuse to participate. I understand not everyone thinks the same way, and there are many different views on this, but I personally see abortion as the killing of an innocent life. In that light, I believe if I were to assist in an abortion, I would be involved in killing another human being. Um, yeah, that is something I cannot do.

I am an excellent nurse. I have never, in my entire 15 year carrier as an RN, made even one medication error. I will lovingly clean your festering, infected and contagious wound. I will enter your room to care for you as you hack TB all around it. I will wipe your head and hold you up as you vomit. I will coach you and rejoice with you as you give birth to new life, and I will hold your hand and cry as you take your last breath. I am an angel of mercy, but I will not participate in your abortion. I will surrender my license, the license that I worked my tail end off to earn, before I compromise my core beliefs. My inbox is receiving many emails from doctors and nurses who are professing the same.

When that happens, there will be one less nurse to care for you in a competent and loving manner. Now multiply it times 14, 000 or more. We are already experiencing a shortage of medical care professionals ….what is this President thinking???

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***adding some more info and links that will be useful to you:
Here is the full government text of what is being rescinded:

Apparently, numerous lawsuits had been initiated against practitioners who had refused abortion or sterilization service to individuals. Employees and students were being discriminated against for refusing abortion instruction, in spite of the Church, Coats and Weldon acts.. It had become quite a problem, especially with the aggression in which Planned Parenthood was seeking unlimited access to these procedures. They were also saying that Roe and Casey gave the right to a woman to receive these procedures from
whomever they chose. Roe and Casey DO NOT preempt Church, Coats and Weldon.

The law that is being rescinded is CRF 45 Part 88 and it defines and makes mandatory the compliance with Church, Coats and Weldon that was being ignored prior to this Title. Removing it will open the door to continued discrimination against health care individuals, students and others who practice conscience objection.

 BTW, conscience objection in the health care field is not a bad thing, nor is it new.  If a nurse refuses to administer blood products due to conscience objection, there are ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS others on duty to administer the blood products without compromising patient safety. In the 15 years I have spent as a nurse, I have never seen a patients health compromised by conscience objection and I have seen nurses peacefully practice this right. There are other laws, such as the Nurse Practice Act that do NOT allow for conscience objection if the patients safety is in jeopardy, and CRF 45 Part 88 cannot trump them.  SO the argument to patient safety is really null and void.