No one should be compelled to commit abortion

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Everyone can agree that no one should be compelled to commit murder, right? Well, why is it that when some of us disagree on the definition of murder, many of the same people who join me in opposing war and opposing the death penalty think that it's perfectly all right to require who believe that abortion is murder to perform abortions?

If you don't believe it's murder, I'm not stopping you from performing or having an abortion. (Yes, I know some people are trying, but many pro-lifers are trying through purely legal means like changing the laws, or doing what I do and working instead to support alternative.) But I don't think anyone the right to compel someone else who thinks it's murder to do it (except in the case where the mother's life is in danger). I live in a society where abortion is legal. I wish it weren't, and I work and give money to make alternatives to abortion more available. I don't interfere with anyone's legal right to get an abortion. Why should people interfere with the rights of conscience of people like me?

Saying something is legal should not mean people are actively compelled to do it. Execution is legal in many states (including mine, to our shame), but that doesn't mean medical personnel should take part in it—and in fact they are legally banned from doing so, as I understand the matter.

Those of us who believe a fetus is a living human being with rights do not have a legal right to interfere with others' abortions, but we should have a right not to be compelled to participate in abortions. Medical professionals should no more be forced to participate in elective abortions than to participate in executions, compulsory sterilization, or experiments such as the Tuskegee syphilis study. (I'm talking about people actively involved: doctors and nurses, not pharmacists or their assistants, office staff, etc.)

If all medical personnel followed their consciences at all times, we should have had a lot fewer crimes in the twentieth century, including in our own country—and that's true even if you believe there's nothing wrong with abortion.

I have known doctors who would not perform abortions and nurses who would not assist, and indeed the doctors may have avoided OB/GYN as their specialty to limit the possibility of being put in a position where they could be forced to participate in abortion. Some of them contributed their time, effort, and even medical supplies to care free for pregnant women who lacked—guess what?—insurance! I strongly do not believe the world would be better off if they were forced to choose between remaining in the medical profession but having to participate in abortion, and leaving and being unable to help all their patients in so many ways besides abortion. Do you really want these doctors and nurses to feel they have to give up their practices—both paid and charitable?

I've heard many analogies. If you don't believe in taking human life, you shouldn't join the military. True. But it's pretty darned obvious that the military takes human lives, isn't it? Is it obvious that the medical profession should take human lives as well as save them? You can tell me the fetus isn't fully a human being, and we can agree to disagree. But you can't tell me it's not alive, and that it's not human.

I'm really surprised that so many people seem insistent that any medical professional should have to perform abortions, and that any medical facility should have to have them there. Doctors and to a lesser extent nurses can choose specialties. They can say that there are procedures they are not comfortable performing: lots of medical personnel don't choose to do plastic surgery, or bypass surgery*, because it's not what they want to do. Hospitals can choose to offer or not offer services. More and more US hospitals have no emergency room, for financial reasons, which I think is terrible—but as far as I know, it's totally legal. I don't see Americans up in arms that any hospital MUST provide an emergency room. It is not discrimination to say "I will not perform abortions" or "This hospital will not perform abortions" in the same way that it would be to say "We will not treat African-Americans" or "We will not treat gays" or "We will not treat Republicans."

I suggest that it is discrimination to say that it's okay to choose not to do plastic surgery, but it's not okay to choose not to do abortion.

I do not, of course, include non-elective abortions: if a patient's life is in danger, then any qualified medical personnel has a duty to assist, whether it's by performing life-saving skin grafts or doing a bypass or performing an abortion because that's what the mother needs to live. Any doctor or nurse who is not qualified to perform or assist in a particular procedure, of course, should not.

* I think I'm not referring to heart bypasses in quite the right way, but I'm not sure where I've gone wrong.

Comments

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Yes, I realize there are areas where one cannot get an abortion. I do not have a good way to balance that against the right of an individual not to be forced to commit what he or she believes is murder.

I'd add that hospitals should have conscience rights too because some are organized and run by groups of individuals with these sorts of values.Catholic hospitals have been around a lot longer than abortion has been legal. To require such hospitals to offer elective abortions would be to compromise their values to the point where they could not continue. I do not think that hospitals that oppose abortions should be forced either, both as a moral matter and because I honestly believe we'd suddenly end up short a good number of hospitals.

I can't say that making something legal should be a guarantee of availability. I can think of lots of things that are legal that are restricted by income: housing and education come immediately to mind. These are positive goods and things that I wish were more available, but we can't simply mandate that everyone have them (school is mandatory until a certain age, but private schools cannot be forced to take everyone). Abortion is not something I wish were more widely available, as you can tell—but even I did wish it, I can't say for sure I'd put it in the category of things that should be legally mandated.

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

This is why I think private hospitals are a bad idea. If hospitals are secular and not-for-profit, you are more likely to end up with equal access for all. A poor woman in South Carolina shouldn't have a different set of options as a rich woman in say, New York, or San Francisco. The choice she makes is her own, but the options should be equal.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

Yes, and I think it's a good idea for secular hospitals to be widespread, for reasons that go beyond abortion. But I can't wish Catholic hospitals closed or sold. They've served an awful lot of people well, including in my own family, and they're an important vocation for many Catholics. I don't know what to suggest to increase the number of secular, not-for-profit hospitals—except that true health care reform might encourage the foundation of more such hospitals. The high costs hospitals incur for patients who have no insurance and can't pay or can't pay fully discourage start-ups.

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

I can agree with that. If private hospitals existed to supplement widespread care available at secular, primary care hospitals, it would be win-win, taking some of the burden off that system. The thing is, most on the left in this debate would love to see public, government run hospitals, but it would make the right howl like demented banshees. You think there's a fuss about insurance? That would be nothing to them challenging private, for-profit industry's control of the vast majority of hospitals.

[aelfgyfu_mead]

AAAUUUGGGHHH! Don't even get me started on the defenders of the absolute right to profit where people's lives are at stake! That's what a lot of the fight over insurance is really about, isn't it? Effective health care reform in this country would decrease profits for a lot of people.

(What I really want is single-payer. I know that has problems, but I do believe I'd prefer those problems to the ones we've got. Of course, if we went to single-payer, the abortion issue would be even worse—but I think there's no threat this country will see a single-payer health care system in my lifetime, so I'm not losing sleep over the potential problems.)

[sg-betty.livejournal.com]

That's absolutely what most of this is about. That and 'I shouldn't have to pay taxes to feed/house/provide medicine for the poor'. But then, that's about profit, too, isn't it?