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The mission of the Healthcare Advocacy and Leadership Organization is to promote, protect, and advocate for the rights of the medically vulnerable through direct patient and family interactions; through community education and awareness programs; and through promotion and development of concrete “life-affirming healthcare"* alternatives for those facing the grave consequences of healthcare rationing and unethical practices, especially those at risk of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH?
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THE DOCTOR WAS DEAD WRONG
THE DOCTOR WAS DEAD WRONG
By Nancy Valko, RN– May 2020
I had a patient in home health whose doctor tried to remove the
ventilator because "his brain stem was destroyed." The wife refused. When I
went in to evaluate him before physical therapy was to start, I found him
alert, talking slowly and using his walker to get around. He even had a
delightful sense of humor! The wife was so glad she had fought the doctors.
PROTECTING THE CONSCIENCE RIGHTS OF HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS
PROTECTING THE CONSCIENCE RIGHTS OF HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS
By Julie Grimstad, President of HALO– May 2020
My original plan was to write about the many ways in which medical professionals who reverence human life are, today, being discriminated against for refusing to compromise their deeply held moral or religious beliefs. But who needs another depressing message right now? So, I searched for some good news and found it.
Good News!
On the HHS.gov website, which has a great deal of good news, under the title “Conscience Protections for Health Care Providers” is the following information.
Your Conscience Rights
Conscience protections apply to health care providers who refuse to perform, accommodate, or assist with certain health care services on religious or moral grounds.
Federal statutes protect health care provider conscience rights and prohibit recipients of certain federal funds from discriminating against health care providers who refuse to participate in these services based on moral objections or religious beliefs.
You may file a complaint under the Federal Health Care Provider Conscience Protection Statutes if you believe you have experienced discrimination because you:
- Objected to, participated in, or refused to participate in specific medical procedures, including abortion and sterilization, and related training and research activities
- Were coerced into performing procedures that are against your religious or moral beliefs
- Refused to provide health care items or services for the purpose of causing, or assisting in causing, the death of an individual, such as by assisted suicide or euthanasia
https://www.hhs.gov/conscience/conscience-protections/index.html#conscience-rights
The Bad News: A Big Bully Wants to Take Away These Conscience Protections
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., PhD., a very influential doctor and one of the architects of Obamacare, opposes protection for the conscience rights of health care providers. Considered an expert on medical ethics, he speaks and writes prolifically for both medical journals and general media outlets. The New England Journal of Medicine, April 2017, carried an article (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb1612472), cowritten by Dr. Emanuel, in which he prescribed certain unjust limits on conscience rights and proclaimed:
The Bad News: A Big Bully Wants to Take Away These Conscience Protections
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, M.D., PhD., a very influential doctor and one of the architects of Obamacare, opposes protection for the conscience rights of health care providers. Considered an expert on medical ethics, he speaks and writes prolifically for both medical journals and general media outlets. The New England Journal of Medicine, April 2017, carried an article (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb1612472), cowritten by Dr. Emanuel, in which he prescribed certain unjust limits on conscience rights and proclaimed:
Health care professionals who are unwilling to accept these limits have two choices: select an area of medicine, such as radiology, that will not put them in situations that conflict with their personal morality or, if there is no such area, leave the profession. …Laws may allow physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care workers to deny patients treatment or to refuse to care for particular populations, but professional medical associations should insist that doing so is unethical.
Dr. Emanuel is a big bully using a classic bullying tactic—pushing people around who lack his clout, threatening, “Do it my way, or else.” He is not trying to take away their lunch money; he is trying to force them to participate in abortion, assisted suicide, and other atrocities that may be legal, but will never be morally acceptable.
We Must Speak Up for Those Who Refuse to Violate Their Consciences
Abraham Lincoln said, "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men."
Remember how we stopped a bully on the playground when we were kids. We stuck up for our friends who were being picked on. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care providers who refuse to violate their consciences, despite serious threats, are courageous souls. For them to be able to continue to protect extremely vulnerable patients (who may one day be you and me), we must speak up now in defense of their freedom to do what is morally right.
In today’s health care system, there are many voices like Dr. Emanuel’s. Ours must be louder!
Abraham Lincoln said, "To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men."
Remember how we stopped a bully on the playground when we were kids. We stuck up for our friends who were being picked on. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other health care providers who refuse to violate their consciences, despite serious threats, are courageous souls. For them to be able to continue to protect extremely vulnerable patients (who may one day be you and me), we must speak up now in defense of their freedom to do what is morally right.
In today’s health care system, there are many voices like Dr. Emanuel’s. Ours must be louder!
CODE OF ETHICS FOR HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS
– May 2020
Profound respect for the life and inherent dignity of every human being has always been at the heart of medicine, but that is changing. The law, society, and medicine now endorse morally objectionable medical procedures, forms of under-treatment that pose serious threats to vulnerable patients, and even the direct killing of certain people. This is corroding the values that define the medical professions and undermining public trust in them.
Sadly, many healthcare providers have been influenced by the culture of death which has tainted our healthcare system. Some aspects of the culture of death are obvious, but others are disguised, subtle, and confusing.
HALO is composing a “Code of Ethics” as a guide for physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers who desire to provide the best medical care to every patient without bias and to protect those committed to their care from harm and injustice.
We invite you to send your questions about medical ethics and to propose issues that should be addressed to feedback@halovoice.org. Your input will help HALO articulate timeless medical ethics in a manner that meets the needs of healthcare providers today.
Below are five examples of ethical issues we believe are crucially important.
- It is the profound obligation and highest privilege of healthcare providers to treat and care for each patient to the best of their ability. Adequate consultation, therefore, is required when there is doubt concerning the morality of some procedure and/or when a procedure involves serious consequences.
- An action or omission intended to cause or facilitate a human being’s death is contrary to the healthcare provider’s role as healer and/or caregiver. Thus, healthcare providers must refuse to participate in any form of abortion, euthanasia, or assisted suicide.
- The failure to provide nutrition and hydration and other ordinary means of preserving life, when the omission will cause or hasten death, is equivalent to euthanasia.
- All human beings share a common dignity from the first moment of their creation. Therefore, a human life, at any stage of development or age, must never be used as a subject for experimentation without their free and fully informed consent.
- Every person has the right and the duty to prepare for the moment of death by setting in order both temporal and spiritual affairs. Therefore, unless a patient who may die soon is well-prepared for death, it is the physician’s duty to inform, or have another responsible person inform, the patient of his or her critical condition.
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