Douglas Turner: Medical reforms worry Catholic health workers
WASHINGTON — When President Obama gave his speech on health insurance reform after Labor Day, Catholics and evangelical Christians focused on two promises they view as fundamental.
He promised that physicians, nurses and institutions that oppose abortion would not be forced by the threat of the withholding of federal aid to perform abortions or other procedures they feel morally bound not to do. And never did.
Obama also promised the bill would not force taxpayers to pay for abortions under Medicaid or any other form of federal reimbursement. Some took this as his promise not to interfere with the 1975 Hyde Amendment that barred such spending.
States and changed federal regulations have poked huge holes into the Hyde Amendment, but groups conscientiously opposed to abortions view the proposed wholesale revisions of health care as a risk of widening those openings. Obama’s assurances were remarkable in view of his record as the most pro-choice candidate ever elected.
As sincere as Obama may have been in his speech here and in his call for “dialogue” on May 18 at Notre Dame, Democrats in Congress are not going along.
Support for abortion outside the Beltway has leveled lately; some polls say it is slipping. A Rasmussen Survey says only 13 percent want tax funds to pay for abortions, and a Pew poll put support for legalized abortions at 47 percent.
At the same time, Democratic powers here increasingly consider federal payments for abortions for the poor as an entitlement, and by contrast see Catholic and Evangelical opponents of abortion as something out of this world. In one sense they are, certainly.
View the heralded Senate Finance Committee approval of a health insurance bill two weeks ago. By an almost straight party line vote, the ruling Democrats voided the Hyde Amendment. Worse, the committee voted down a conscience amendment, with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N. Y.,voting against these protections for conscientious religious hospitals and staff.
Schumer’s spokesman, Max Young, said: “Every year, Sen. Schumer votes to ensure that doctors and nurses have the protection of the conscience clause but there was always an exception for life and death situations. This amendment with its extremely broad language didn’t have that exception and if passed would have put the lives of women in danger.”
On Oct. 8, the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter to Congress saying it remains “apprehensive” about the course reform may take. If suitable language is not made part of the final bill, it said, it will “vigorously” oppose it. The Catholic Hospital Association made parallel comments, but the campaigns have been very muted.
One reason may be their deep fear of Democratic reprisals against church-based institutions through regulations and decisions made by Obama’s strongly pro-choice secretary of health human services, Kathleen Sebelius.
In Buffalo, Msgr. Robert E. Zapfel, the bishop’s representative on health care issues, said staff in the local Catholic hospital system is “concerned” about where this is going: “They should not be forced to perform procedures to which they are adamantly opposed and which they view as immoral.”
Dennis McCarthy, spokesman for that system, said chief executive officer Joseph McDonald “meets regularly with all our local members of Congress and told them we can’t support any revisions that don’t meet our concerns” about Hyde and conscience.
Prominent local Catholic lawyer Edward C. Cosgrove has some advice for those politicians. Quoting St. Thomas More, from Robert Bolt’s play, “A Man for All Seasons,” Cosgrove said: “I think that when statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”
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Oops! I erred last Monday saying Obama carried Missouri in 2008. Sen. John McCain did.
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