Freedom of Conscience Hypocrisy

We've had this debate on freedom of conscience around here, which was in response to Kathy at Comments From Left Field, and her essay, "Pledging Allegiance and Freedom of Conscience."

Kathy hammers "social conservatives who strongly support “conscience exemptions” for health care professionals who do not want to provide abortions or dispense contraceptives or even refer a woman needing an abortion or contraception to where she can obtain those services."

Then she says:

It appears, however, that conscience only matters to the extent that it adheres to neoconservative and right-wing Republican orthodoxy. The voice of conscience can be safely ignored when it speaks to concerns like capital punishment, or torture, or war, or pledging allegiance to the flag.

In other words, conservatives are hypocritical fascists. How dare they desire to exercise moral foundations in objecting to the pledge of allegiance? The other stuff about capital punishment, torture, war, blah, blah ... is really just added condemnation, as each issue for conservatives is based on a different foundation of moral opposition.

But Kathy's got no time for that. She just wants to demonize those EVIL Neocons and their allied "theocons" and "Christianists" who are allegedly mounting a hegemonic project of traditionalism and flag-waving bigotry.

But wait!

Kathy's got more to say on freedom of conscience as it applies to the provision of abortion services. As cited, many doctors, as a matter for conscience, will not perform abortions because they consider it murder of an unborn human being.

But according to Kathy, the all important "freedom of conscience" that she champions for resisting the death penalty and torture, should not apply to the killing of the unborn:

On tonight’s show, Rachel Maddow interviewed Melissa Harris-Lacewell, who teaches politics and African-American history at Princeton University, about the “Right of Conscience” rule that soon-to-be former Pres. Bush is pushing through for all entities that receive federal funding from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Most people probably don’t realize the sweeping consequences this “conscience exemption” could have. As Maddow pointed out in her interview setup, the right to opt out of performing an abortion, or directly participating or assisting in an abortion procedure, has always existed. But this rule would go well beyond that, in terms both of the employees and the procedures that would be covered [emphasis mine]:

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.

It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to “an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments,” the draft rule said ....

The HHS proposal has set off a sharp debate about medical ethics and the duties of healthcare workers.

Last year, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology said a “patient’s well-being must be paramount” when a conflict arises over a medical professional’s beliefs.

In calling for limits on “conscientious refusals,” ACOG cited four recent examples. In Texas, a pharmacist rejected a rape victim’s prescription for emergency contraception. In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital. [So much for exceptions to save the life of the mother.]

“Although respect for conscience is important, conscientious refusals should be limited if they constitute an imposition of religious or moral beliefs on patients [or] negatively affect a patient’s health,” ACOG’s Committee on Ethics said. It also said physicians have a “duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel that they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive services that patients request.”

As broad as this rule is, it could potentially be exercised in the context of many other medical procedures to which a given employee objected on moral or religious grounds: blood transfusions and surgery in general (opposed by Jehovah’s Witnesses), anesthesia, vaccinations, removal of ovaries or uterus, stem cell research, and providing terminal sedation to dying patients.

I’m sure others could up with many more.

As Maddow said, “They can’t make abortion illegal, so they’ll make it impossible.”

Thus, it goes both ways, and conscience is not really the issue for leftists like Kathy.

The right to abortion on demand - incuding the insertion of surgical knives into the skulls of 8-month "fetuses," or the abandonment to linen closets of babies who survive these executions - is what all of this pseudo-moral outrage is all about.