Conscience rights at risk: States, doctors consider what's at stake

Published: 2007-03-23

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Although a proposal to protect the conscience rights of health care providers and institutions that don't want to participate in certain medical procedures isn't getting much action in Congress, the issue of conscience protection is a hot topic in several states and within the medical community. The Abortion Nondiscrimination Act of 2007, sponsored by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., has gotten no co-sponsors since its Jan. 22 introduction and no hearings have been scheduled on it by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Meanwhile, battles are heating up in various parts of the country over proposals that Catholic leaders say would violate health care providers' rights -- as affirmed in official American Medical Association policy -- to decline to participate in actions that conflict with their own "personal, religious or moral beliefs." The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine also raised the topic of conscience protection in a recent issue by publishing the results of a survey on how doctors' moral or religious beliefs affect patient care.

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