As I wrote in my 2016 blog “Conscientious Objection, Conscience Rights and Workplace Discrimination” :

The tragic cases of Nancy Cruzan and Christine Busalacchi , young Missouri women who were claimed to be in a “persistent vegetative state” and starved and dehydrated to death, outraged those of us in Missouri Nurses for Life and we took action.

Besides educating people about severe brain damage, treatment, cases of recovery and the radical change in medical ethics that could lead to the legalization of euthanasia, we also fought for healthcare providers’ rights against workplace discrimination for refusing to participate in deliberate death decisions. We talked to nurses who were threatened with termination.

Although Missouri had some protections against forcing participating in abortion, there were no statutes we could find where health care providers were protected against being forced to participate in deliberate death decisions. We were also told by some legislators that our chance of success was almost nil.

Nevertheless, we persisted and after years of work and enduring legislators watering down our original proposal to include lethal overdoses and strong penalties, Missouri Revised Statutes, Section 404.872.1 was finally signed into law in 1992. It states:

Refusal to honor health care decision, discrimination prohibited, when.

404.872. No physician, nurse, or other individual who is a health care provider or an employee of a health care facility shall be discharged or otherwise discriminated against in his employment or employment application for refusing to honor a health care decision withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment if such refusal is based upon the individual’s religious beliefs, or sincerely held moral convictions.

(L. 1992 S.B. 573 & 634 § 7)

PROGRESS DURING THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

In 2018, the Trump administration announced a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division  in the department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to enforce “federal laws that protect conscience and the free exercise of religion and prohibit coercion and discrimination in health and human services”. The division specifically mentions “issues such as abortion and assisted suicide (among others) in HHS-funded or conducted programs and activities” and includes a link to file a conscience or religious freedom complaint “if you feel a health care provider or government agency coerced or discriminated against you (or someone else) unlawfully”.

Both Planned Parenthood (abortion) and Compassion and Choices (assisted suicide) loudly condemned this.

Lawsuits were quickly filed by groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Center for Reproductive Rights, delaying implementation of the Final Conscience Rule until at least late November. The first lawsuit was filed by San Francisco within hours of the announcement of the Rule.

NOW STATES ARE GETTING INVOLVED

In 2020, the Medical Conscience Rights Initiative (MCRI)  was launched by the Religious Freedom Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom and the Christ Medicus Foundation to promote legislation on the state level “to protect America’s healthcare providers from mandates to perform voluntary procedures in violation of their conscience (e.g., abortion, physician assisted suicide, gender transition surgery, etc.).”

Now five states-Arkansas, Ohio, South Carolina, Florida and now Montana– have enacted versions of this model legislation while “similar efforts are ongoing in multiple other states.”

CONCLUSION

Conscience rights are a necessity, especially since as Dr. Donna Harrison, director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) makes the crucial point that:

 “Those who oppose the HHS Conscience Rule demonstrate their clear intention to squeeze out of the medical profession any doctor who still abides by the Hippocratic Oath, and to squelch any opposition to forcing doctors to kill human beings at the beginning and end of life.” (Emphasis added)

Disturbingly, as a 2021 paper “Teaching the Holocaust in Nursing Schools: The Perspective of the Victims and Survivors” points out: “the majority of nursing and medical schools do not include Holocaust and genocide studies in their curriculum“, unlike years ago when it was included as an essential part of medical ethics education.

The results are frightening, as I wrote in a 2019 blog “How Could This Happen? Ohio Doctor Accused of Murder in 25 Patient Overdose Deaths”. The doctor was eventually acquitted of murder after “Husel’s defense team, led by high-profile attorney Jose Baez, argued that no maximum doses of fentanyl are considered illegal under state law and that his client was trying to give comfort care to people who were dying or near death.” (Emphasis added)

 Today, both the American Medical Association and American Nurses Association champion “abortion rights” and have dropped their total opposition to medically assisted suicide.

Without conscience rights and whistleblower protections, our health care system can not only become unethical but also downright dangerous to both healthcare providers and patients.