As the deadline of April 9 approaches for citizens to send comments to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on regulations to protect health care providers' freedom of conscience, Concerned Women for America (CWA) is spotlighting how the regulations also protect patients. CWA's President Wendy Wright stated:
"Patients trust their health care providers to use good judgment. We place our lives and health into their hands, believing they will "do no harm". It's the last profession that we should pressure to ignore their conscience. Too much is at stake. Yet, increasingly, health care providers report being discriminated against because of their moral beliefs, despite federal laws and civil rights regulations to protect the freedom of conscience.
"If health care providers are forced to perform objectionable procedures it will push qualified, ethical people out of the profession completely, exacerbating the crisis of fewer health care workers in an already diminishing field. This will hurt the poor the most, since many health providers in underserved populations are faith-based. Conscientious physicians are the very ones most likely to be in rural areas or inner-cities, and ministering to the poor and the medically underserved.
"Forcing doctors, nurses, pharmacists or others in the health care field to violate their conscience will ultimately jeopardize patients. It would force ethical people out of the profession entirely to accommodate the temporary demands of a few. It will reduce access to health care for everyone.
"Imagine the barbarities that would be committed if providers were not personally committed to strong moral standards. Protecting the right of providers to follow their conscience is crucial to our own health."
Concerned Women for America is the nation's largest public policy women's organization.
