Cardinal George is being a bit disingenuous about the Reproductive Health and Access Act. In his letter to the Sun-Times he makes several claims that the law will force health care professionals to perform abortions.
Yet, the law’s text doesn’t require that at all:
| 11 | Section 35. Patient access. |
|
| 12 | (a) Pursuant to this Act, all individuals shall have |
|
| 13 | appropriate and necessary access to the full range of |
|
| 14 | reproductive healthcare. Notwithstanding any other provision |
|
| 15 | of this Act or any other law to the contrary, individual health |
|
| 16 | care professionals who object to providing certain |
|
| 17 | reproductive health care based on religion or personal |
|
| 18 | conscience may refuse to provide such services only under the |
|
| 19 | following conditions: |
|
| 20 | (1) the objecting health care professional provides |
|
| 21 | prior written notice to patients, or, where the objecting |
|
| 22 | professional is an employee, to his or her employer, of his |
|
| 23 | or her intention to refuse to provide such health care |
|
| 24 | services; |
|
| 25 | (2) the objecting health care professional or another |
| 1 | health care professional within his or her practice or |
|
| 2 | place of employment provides the patient with timely, |
|
| 3 | accurate, and complete information about the patient's |
|
| 4 | care options in a balanced and professional manner; |
|
| 5 | (3) the objecting health care professional or another |
|
| 6 | health care professional within his or her practice or |
|
| 7 | place of employment assists the patient in obtaining such |
|
| 8 | care in a timely fashion; and |
|
| 9 | (4) where the objecting health care professional is an |
|
| 10 | employee, the employer can accommodate the employee's |
|
| 11 | objection without undue hardship. |
|
| 12 | (B) Violations of this Section shall be sanctioned under |
|
| 13 | State licensing statutes by the appropriate State agency. |
So actually what has to happen is that health care workers have to explain what services they will not provide and offer medically accurate advice to an individual seeking care and then, if that health care worker won’t provide the service, help them find an institution that will.
Offering up medically accurate information to a patient is all that is required. The situation George is advocating would allow a Christian Scientist to offer someone who broke their leg nothing but instructions to pray if they didn’t want to violate their conscience and not offer any other options for the patient. That doesn’t seem like much of a way to run a health care system.
Sorry man but I think the Sun Times is partially right on this, why because there is nothing in this about practice scope, so your Opthomologist would have to deal with this.
Your Opthomologist or ENT doctor dosen’t give you the warning in (1) and you then ask them for BC or a day after prescription they have to provide or risk losing their license.
Putting it another way, would you be comfortable with all of these restrictions if they had to be in place so your doctor had the option not to talk about the power of prayer.
Lets look at the proposal…
1) So if someone asks my wife about a repoductive health thing that is out of scope of her practice put not out of scope of her license she would have to pre-inform her employer if she had an objection?
3) You have a practice with two employees husband and wife who share a viewpoint, sounds like one of them has to cave?
4) A undo hardship definition? Who gets to define that? We can’t afford to hire another person so you have to share the information.
If you violate this you can lose your ability to work (B)….
Are the current regulations that allow someone to site personal objections on this subject really that bad?
Also on (3) it seems to me that if you had a group of Nuns running a clinic they are kind of forced to offer the services.
You really want to get the Catholic Church out of the charity health care business? Seriously, how do you work around 3 in that case?