New Pro-Life Bill would
Protect Hospitals from Performing Abortions

July 12, 2002—Washington, DC: A House of Representatives subcommittee on Thursday held a hearing on new pro-life legislation to protect the rights of private and religious hospitals and other medical facilities that do not wish to perform abortions.

The Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (HR 4691) would guarantee that all health care entities are afforded the "abortion conscience clause" that federal and state laws currently provide to doctors and medical professionals who wish not to be involved in performing abortions.

In 1996, Congress passed, and President Clinton signed into law, provisions that protect health care professionals and a "health care entity" from being forced to perform and abortion if they have moral or religious objections to it. However, "court interpretations have called into question whether these sections of law apply to hospitals that object to offering elective abortions," according to the bill sponsor, pro-life Congressman Michael Bilirakis (R-FL).

Pro-life senators, in 1998, attempted to clarify the record by stating that a "health care entity" was defined to include physicians and other medical professionals but not meant to exclude hospitals.

Yet, as Karen Vosburgh, a board member of Valley Hospital in Palmer, Alaska explains, the clarification hasn't stopped states from forcing hospitals to perform abortions.

A local abortion practitioner in Palmer performs first-trimester abortions in an abortion facility and, because Alaska law mandates second-trimester abortions be performed in a hospital, used Valley Hospital to perform them. In the early 1990s, the hospital board voted to prohibit most abortions.

The abortion practitioner sued Valley Hospital and both a trial judge and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled Valley Hospital must allow the abortions to continue. Vosburgh, also the director of Alaska Right to Life, said the courts declared Valley Hospital a "quasi-public" institution because it receives some state and federal money and insisted it is unable to prohibit abortions.

"Our hospital's policy is no different from the language of the federal Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortions with the exception of rape, incest and life of the mother," Vosburgh explained.

Vosburgh maintains her hospital is entitled to the same conscience clause protections as doctors and nurses and Lynn Wardle, a BYU law professor agrees.

"In repeated cases, pro-abortion extremists are trying (successfully in many cases) to assert the position that a health care entity who will not perform abortions must be denied access to the public marker," Wardle, who testified in the subcommittee with Vosburgh, explained.

Wardle discussed a New Jersey case which he says is typical of the new focus by abortion advocates.

Abortion advocates in New Jersey are working to stop the merger between a secular hospital and a Catholic hospital because the merger will result in the new hospital adopting the policy of the Catholic facility to prohibit performing abortions. Rather than opening up their own abortion facilities, Wardle said, the abortion advocates are "taking the position that a hospital which does not perform abortions must be disqualified from participating in the health care profession."

During the abortion debate prior to the Roe v. Wade decision, abortion advocacy groups argued for the "right to privacy" for women to be allowed to have abortions. These groups, Wardle says, have shifted the debate from tolerating abortion to forcing hospitals and doctors (citing the new mandatory abortion training program in New York City) to perform them.

Abortion advocates on the panel, led by pro-abortion members Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Lois Capps (D-CA) and Peter Duetch (D-FL), argued the bill would "turn the health care industry on its ear" and hurt women. They claimed the bill would "impose religious doctrine" on those who do not share these beliefs and would hurt public health.

Catherine Weiss, director of the ACLU's "Reproductive Freedom Project," said the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act would hurt women by disallowing them access to emergency contraception. Weiss claimed some hospitals could define certain forms of contraception as abortifacients and refuse to provide them to women seeking birth control.

Pro-life members of the committee who spoke, including pro-life Congressman Billy Tauzin (R-LA) and Joe Pitts (R-PA) disagreed saying the bill is simply an effort to "close a loophole, not expand rights."

"Abortion is elective surgery. It is not prenatal care. It is not basic health care," Pitts explained.

Medical groups including the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and the Christian Medical and Dental Associations and pro-life organizations such as the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Concerned Women for America, and the Susan B. Anthony List, among many others, support the bill.