WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 15, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Leaders of three Catholic organizations have urged Congress to add «conscience protection» language to an appropriations bill’s Hyde Amendment on abortion funding.
«This additional language is urgently needed to counteract a nationwide effort to attack the conscience rights of religious and other health care providers,» the leaders said in a July 13 letter to members of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee. The legislation involves the Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill for fiscal year 2005.
The letter was signed by Monsignor William Fay, general secretary of the U.S. bishops’ conference; Father Michael Place, president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States; and Dr. John Lane, president of the Catholic Medical Association.
The letter cited an Alaska court which forced a community hospital to provide elective late-term abortions contrary to its policy and the sentiment of the community, and a New Jersey case in which abortion advocacy groups urged the state to require a Catholic health system to build an abortion clinic on its premises to serve what they see as a right of «access» to abortion.
This year, the letter noted, the state of New Mexico refused to approve a hospital lease because the community-owned facility, following the same policy as over 80% of hospitals in the United States, declined to perform elective abortions.
«The Conscience Protection language will protect hospitals and other institutional and individual health care providers from governmental discrimination when they decline to provide, pay for, or refer for abortion,» said the (letter.
