ADF: What’s LEFT of the Constitution? (“Kill or Else” Edition)

“What’s Left of the Constitution?” is a periodic news digest featuring Alliance Defense Fund legal analysis of proposals, policies, and trends advanced by the federal government. On a regular basis, this digest specifically highlights policies and actions that move America away from the principles of the U.S. Constitution and closer to the demands of the political Left, especially ones that threaten religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and the family.

Before leaving office, the Bush Administration put forth regulations providing protections for pro-life doctors, nurses and pharmacists. Now, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are trying to impose a “kill or else” regime in the healthcare profession by suing to strike down these constitutionally-sound and common sense protections. ADF and CLS have stepped in, filing a motion to intervene on behalf of medical organizations representing more than 20,000 pro-life health care workers.

Absent these regulations, several laws protecting health care workers employed by medical organizations that receive federal money were impotent and unenforced for years—allowing hospitals that receive taxpayer funding to discriminate against pro-life medical professionals. In short, these workers were one “wrong move” away from dire consequences for refusing to perform, or participate in, abortions…while the hospital continued to enjoy tax-funded subsidies.

Thus, without such a clause, the “right” to abortion—which is listed nowhere in the Constitution—is given preference over the right of conscience, the idea upon which our Founding Fathers based our First Amendment freedoms.

Let’s be clear what this means: someone’s purported “right” to abortion, under the umbrella of “health care,” would be elevated above a doctor’s right to refuse to perform one. Forget the Hippocratic oath (“first, do no harm”)—the ACLU and its allies wish to glorify abortion over all other things. This issue goes beyond abortion to the very core of individual liberty.

Pro-life medical workers fight for life and their own constitutional rights. In return, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood want to drive them from the profession. The failure to protect pro-life doctors and medical workers is also a direct attack on the health care system itself—it would drive thousands of health care workers away at a time when America apparently can least afford it.

Those who are so quick to quote Thomas Jefferson regarding the so-called “wall of separation” should stop ignoring Jefferson’s entire statement. All the ACLU has to do is read the very next sentence of Jefferson’s famous letter:

Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

Of course, the ACLU and its allies will only use Jefferson as long as he remains useful. Our opponents act as if it is a “social duty” to kill the preborn, even for those who refuse. We believe it our duty to protect the preborn, and the medical professionals who would care for them—and we believe that all human life is entitled to these natural rights.

With a network of more than 1,200 allied attorneys, ADF continues to fight in the legal arena so that pro-life medical workers are respected in the profession and protected by law. In filing a motion to intervene in the recent ACLU and Planned Parenthood lawsuits against the HHS regulations, ADF is standing with doctors and nurses, and saying “no” to the “kill or else” desires of their opponents.

Additional links:

· Americans United for Life: “New HHS Rules Provide Much-Needed Reprieve for Freedom of Conscience”

· Americans United for Life: Healthcare Rights of Conscience

· The Protection of Conscience Project

· Physicians for Life: Rights of Conscience

· ADF: “Comment on Provider Conscience Regulation”

· ADF: “Univ. of Wis. Hospitals secret plan to perform second-trimester abortions unveiled”

· ADF: “ADF: Pro-abortion activists wrong on federal rights of conscience rule”

· ADF: “Coast Guard relents, allows officer to refuse vaccine from aborted baby”

· ADF: “9th Circuit thwarts Wash. state’s attempt to stall conscience rights”

· ADF: “Court rejects California’s challenge to healthcare conscience rights”

· ADF: “American Counseling Association must honor freedom of conscience, religion”

· ADF: “Federal appeals court upholds federal protection for pro-life medical professionals”

· USA Today: “Shortage of surgeons pinches U.S. hospitals”

ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.