Yesterday, I wrote an article on the necessity of religious freedom to exist
for freedom to exist at all. If one cannot live according to his or her values
and are forced to adopt the values of another, then that person is not living in
freedom. It is exactly this kind of oppression that Thomas Jefferson and the
framers of the Constitution
took pains to prohibit.
However, the culture of today has devalued
conscience and religious freedom so much that people complain about anyone who
tries to exercise their religious freedom when it comes in conflict with the
desires of another. One can simply point to the recent lawsuit brought on by the
American Civil Liberties Union against Mercy Medical Center in Redding, CA for
refusing to perform a tubal ligation on a patient during a C-section delivery.
According to the
Sacramento Bee, the Dignity Health, which is the group who
manages the Roman Catholic hospital was simply following their policy "'not to
provide sterilization services at Dignity Health's Catholic facilities,' in
accordance with guidelines issued by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."
1
Given that 1) Mercy Medical Center is a Catholic
institution 2) the procedure is elective and in no way necessary and 3) Catholic
doctrine does teach sterilization are interfering with the proper function of
reproductive systems as God designed them, their denial shouldn't have been a
surprise at all. One should no more expect a Roman Catholic hospital to perform
sterilization surgery than to expect a Muslim restaurateur to serve alcohol or
an Orthodox Jewish Deli to offer a ham and cheese sandwich. If you want that,
you may have to go elsewhere.
Who Gets Priority?
The central issue in this fight is one of priority. No one is advocating
legislating a ban on tubal ligation procedures. In fact, Dignity Health manages
other hospitals that are non-Catholic and performs the procedure at those. The
policy of the company is simply to honor the wishes of the institution it
serves. The question is does the desires of the patient take precedence over the
moral values the organization wishes to practice? Whose desires take priority?
In his recent commentary on the case, Charles C. Camosy correctly noted that
medical care needs to hold to a higher moral standard than, say, a fast-food
restaurant:
Alarmingly, this understanding of medicine is coming under tremendous
pressure from what Mark Mercurio, a professor of pediatrics and ethics at
Yale University's medical school, calls "the Burger King model." Instead of
medicine being treated as a profession governed by internal norms and
values, it's increasingly seen as market-based, with patients as customers
who come in and "Have It Their Way."
…
But if you take a professional
view of medicine, the following question must be asked: Is intentionally
interfering with someone's reproductive system (in ways which do not address
some injury or disease) an act of healthcare? This is a disputed question,
of course, and one's answer depends on one's particular value system. From
the Catholic Church's perspective, it is not. 2
Camosy is right here. We hear complaints all the time that corporations are
greedy; they shouldn't be in it only for the money but make corporate decisions
in way that are morally upright, too. This is much more important for healthcare
organizations where the bottom line can include pulling life support in order to
save costs on a viable patient. But one cannot have it both ways. You can't
demand a corporation adopt a moral framework then ask them to violate it because
it conflicts with the desires of a few individuals who don't want to travel to
another location. I would rather know a hospital has a strong moral stand
towards the preservation of human life in both its existing and potential forms
than seek treatment at an avowedly amoral institution.
Camosy concludes "When
healthcare providers are forced by law to violate the values that make them who
they are — because of the request of customers demanding goods and services in
the free market — it signals the end of medicine as a professional practice."
3 If medicine becomes a "whatever the buyer
wants" business, it loses any moral compunction to do the right thing. In
matters of life and death, I'm not willing to make that trade.
The ACLU, an organization claiming to uphold religious liberty, is the agency bringing the lawsuit. Clearly, this institution is more concerned about being on the left side of the political spectrum rather than the right side of conscience.
References
