What is you take on this Act Passed by the US Congress? In the Development discourse, how do you find this move? Can we adopt such practices / laws in India? Justify your answer.
In a bipartisan 245-182 vote, House members July 13 passed the Conscience Protection Act, which would provide legal protection to doctors, nurses, hospitals and all health care providers who choose not to provide abortions as part of their health care practice.
"We're grateful to House Speaker Paul Ryan for bringing the Conscience Protection Act to a vote, to all the co-sponsors for their leadership, and to those members of both parties who support the civil right of conscience," said Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore in a statement.
Congress finds as follows:
(1) Thomas Jefferson stated a conviction common to our Nation’s founders when he declared in 1809 that “[n]o provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority”.
(2) In 1973, the Supreme Court concluded that the government must leave the abortion decision “to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman’s attending physician”, recognizing that a physician may choose not to participate in abortion. Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 164 (1973). The Court cited with approval a policy that “neither physician, hospital, nor hospital personnel shall be required to perform any act violative of personally-held moral principles”, 410 U.S. at 143 n. 38, and cited State laws upholding this principle. Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 197–8 (1973).
(3) Congress’s enactments to protect this right of conscience in health care include the Church amendment of 1973 (42 U.S.C. 300a–7), the Coats/Snowe amendment of 1996 (42 U.S.C. 238n), and the Hyde/Weldon amendment approved by Congresses and Presidents of both parties every year since 2004.
(4) None of these laws explicitly provides a “private right of action” so victims of discrimination can defend their conscience rights in court, and administrative enforcement by the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights has been lax, at times allowing cases to languish for years without resolution.
(5) Defying the Federal Hyde/Weldon amendment, California’s Department of Managed Health Care has mandated coverage for all elective abortions in all health plans under its jurisdiction. Other States such as New York and Washington have taken or considered similar action, and some States may go farther to require all physicians and hospitals to provide or facilitate abortions.
(6) Members of Congress have repeatedly questioned U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell about California’s ongoing violation which began in August 2014. The Department of Health and Human Services has acknowledged California’s violations and indicated that the Department was taking them “seriously” and that the matter would be resolved “expeditiously”. Despite numerous complaints and calls for prompt enforcement of the Hyde/Weldon amendment in California, however, the Department has failed to resolve the matter.
(7) The vast majority of medical professionals do not perform abortions, with 86 percent of ob/gyns unwilling to provide them in a recent study (Obstetrics & Gynecology, Sept. 2011) and the great majority of hospitals choosing to do so in rare cases or not at all. Therefore, a policy requiring all health care providers to be involved in abortion could seriously disrupt the health care system, reducing the number and diversity of providers available to serve the basic health needs of American women and men.
(8) A health care provider’s decision not to participate in an abortion, like Congress’s decision not to fund most abortions, erects no new barrier to those seeking to perform or undergo abortions but leaves each party free to act as he or she wishes.
(9) Such protection poses no conflict with other Federal laws, such as the law requiring emergency stabilizing treatment for a pregnant woman and her unborn child when either is in distress (Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act). As the Obama administration has said, these areas of law have operated side by side for many years and both should be fully enforced (76 Federal Register 9968–77 (2011) at 9973).
(10) Reaffirming longstanding Federal policy on conscience rights and providing a right of action in cases where it is violated allows longstanding and widely supported Federal laws to work as intended.
...This is an Academic Discussion intended to initiate thought process in the Course: Economic Development and Policy... The issue is the conflict between being Liberal and Conservative. The legal interventions create social change but the moot question is what will be the mechanism of change?
5 comments:
Considering the Doctor's Code of ethics, Can a personal belief come in the way of performance of a Professional Role? What may be the possible outcome of the Act?
Read the Counter Opinion which Criticizes the Conscience Protection Act for being against the right of women to decide their Reproductive Destiny.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/lauretta-brown/dems-slam-conscience-protection-act-vehicle-discrimination-un-american
Sir i strongly believe that professional conduct will always come before ones personal belief. Because for doctors, they have taken a pledge to help any person who is not well (also called hyppocratic oath). These codes are there for a reason which is to see to it that conduct is proper. Personal beliefs in my opinion should be best left at home because once u take a professional responsibility you become responsible for others. Moreover living in a society its essential that we abide by these codes and oaths or else we won't be able to coexist. As for the insurance companies as private entities have the right whether to include abortions in theur list. There will be galore of grave complications/problems. For example if there is a threat to life of the mother during the pregnacy due to the baby and doctors and nurses refuse to operate she will certainly die. And it's actually happend coincidentally with an Indian couple in some country where the mother died due to the exact same reason which is really sad. I could only dream to imagine the pain the father would feel after losing all his family one day, all of a sudden because of some personal beliefs. It's immoral as well as logically wrong.
Kaustubh shrivastav
15bal049
Sir i strongly believe that professional conduct will always come before ones personal belief. Because for doctors, they have taken a pledge to help any person who is not well (also called hyppocratic oath). These codes are there for a reason which is to see to it that conduct is proper. Personal beliefs in my opinion should be best left at home because once u take a professional responsibility you become responsible for others. Moreover living in a society its essential that we abide by these codes and oaths or else we won't be able to coexist. As for the insurance companies as private entities have the right whether to include abortions in theur list. There will be galore of grave complications/problems. For example if there is a threat to life of the mother during the pregnacy due to the baby and doctors and nurses refuse to operate she will certainly die. And it's actually happend coincidentally with an Indian couple in some country where the mother died due to the exact same reason which is really sad. I could only dream to imagine the pain the father would feel after losing all his family one day, all of a sudden because of some personal beliefs. It's immoral as well as logically wrong.
Kaustubh shrivastav
15bal049
There has been much debate about the need for abortion-related conscience protection in the pending health care bills. But the bills pose a threat to conscience that is not limited to abortion.
1. Current federal law permits, without fanfare, the accommodation of a wide range of religious and moral objections in the provision of health insurance and services. Currently, insurers are free under federal law to accommodate purchasers or plan sponsors with moral or religious objections to certain services. Plans may, and currently do, accommodate those objections by allowing purchasers not to buy coverage for assisted suicide, gender change surgery, contraceptives, sterilization, in vitro fertilization, or other procedures that the purchaser or sponsor finds religiously or morally problematic. Likewise, federal law currently does not forbid insurers from excluding from their plans any services that the insurers themselves oppose on moral or religious grounds. Nor does federal law forbid a health benefits plan from accommodating the moral or religious objections of individual or institutional health care providers, or prevent such providers from contracting with a plan. Indeed, these various freedoms have hardly been considered accommodations, because they have not been requests for exceptions to general rules, but simply decisions not to buy, or otherwise not to participate in, coverage for the objectionable services. And these conscience-based decisions by some participants in the system happen daily and without incident.
2. The proposed healthcare bills would impose new mandates to cover certain services, creating new risks of conflicts over conscience. The current bills require health plans to cover “essential benefits.” The essential benefits, in turn, must include certain specified categories, such as “ambulatory patient services,” “prescription drugs,” and “preventive” services. And within those categories, the bills designate an Executive Branch official to define what specific services plans must cover. Thus, any item or service defined as “essential” must be provided—regardless of any conscientious objection on the part of the insurer, purchaser, or plan sponsor. The freedom that insurers, purchasers, and sponsors currently enjoy under federal law to offer or purchase health plans that are not morally or religiously objectionable to them will be lost. In addition, in various ways, the bills give the Executive Branch the authority to regulate the selection of providers by health plans. Health plans may therefore be newly required to exclude providers because they have a conscientious objection to particular procedures.
3. The final bill should be fixed to retain the freedom of conscience that insurers, purchasers, sponsors, and providers currently have under federal law. In light of these new mandates, Congress is faced with the question whether it will require those who wish to participate in the vital work of providing health care coverage and services in America to violate their conscience as a condition of that participation. The answer should be a resounding no. The right to conscience protection derives from the dignity of the human person—it should not be limited to a particular procedure or religious group. Out of respect for this foundational principle, Congress should expressly declare in the final bill that it should not be construed to prohibit accommodations of conscience for those who participate in the delivery or coverage of health care services. Such a protection would not amend any other federal law, or affect any state or local law, but instead prevent only the new law from imposing new burdens on conscience. This would not effect a sea change regarding conscience protection, but instead would prevent one.
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