Keep conscience rights, stop abortion mandates

Life-honoring healthcare professionals have experienced firings, disrimination and coercion. Yet the administration plans to remove the only regulation protecting their freedom of conscience. And now healthcare "reform" legislation would have the federal government fund abortions.

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In the news...

January 4, 2010

Click here for healthcare "reform" legislation update

Read and follow Freedom2Care blogs:

• Rescue us from this precipice
• Watch new online video by docs on healthcare legislation
• The doctor is not in
• Why one woman ran to the hospital when she heard about the healthcare bill
• Govt.-run health care bill a radical revamp of U.S. policy, would fund abortions from U.S. Treasury
• Silent no more

Unraveling Legislative Legerdemain - op-ed by Jonathan Imbody published in The Church Report

December 18, 2009 - With over 5,000 pages of House and Senate healthcare overhaul bill text written in legal mumbo-jumbo designed to fool people, the best way to figure out what's really behind the legislative legerdemain is to watch what happens to clear-cut amendments. Read full commentary

Human Events / op-ed by Jonathan Imbody - Healthcare radicals bank on public ignorance and gullibility

November 21, 2009 - To give you an idea of the kind of math that Reid and his allies employ, they conveniently left out of the projected cost of the bill some $247 billion -- the cost of a 10-year freeze on cuts in Medicare payments to doctors. Reid had proposed that expensive "doctor-fix" plan to buy off the American Medical Association, which dutifully endorsed the overall health care bill in response to the cash inducement.  Read op-ed

Senate vote within hours could determine healthcare - call now!

November 20, 2009 - This weekend the U.S. Senate will hold a crucial vote on whether or not to proceed with the expensive healthcare overhaul bill that will:

* launch government funding of abortions
* threaten the conscience rights of faith-based healthcare professionals and
* deeply inject the government into the physician-patient relationship.

Read full story and call to action

National Right to Life: Polling summary

November 20, 2009 - National Right to Life has prepared a compilation of recent poll results showing that the public opposes government funding for abortion. View summary

LifeNews: Video highlights healthcare access loss for patients if Congress passes anti-conscience, big govt. bill

Nov. 6, 2009 -A group of pro-life doctors and a coalition of pro-life groups are challenging the American Medical Associations endorsement of the pro-abortion health care bill in the House. They say the bill not only pays for abortions with government funds but fails to offer full conscience protection.

The 16,000-member Christian Medical Association and Freedom2Care, an association of pro-life groups, have jointly released a new video describing the problems with HR 3962, the House health care bill, and the need for conscience protections for medical professions.  story and video

New York Times: Haggling Over Abortion Compromise in Health Bill

Nov. 5, 2009 - The bill would establish a new government insurance plan, which would compete with private insurers around the country. Under the bill as now written, the secretary of health and human services could decide whether the public insurance option covers abortions. Douglas D. Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee, said Mr. Ellsworth's proposal was "a phony compromise." Read article

Baptist Press: Pro-lifers: Amendment to healthcare bill "phony"

Nov. 5, 2009 - The U.S. House of Representatives appears poised to vote on health-care legislation that includes a so-called pro-life compromise opponents of abortion say is bogus. The House may vote as early as Saturday on the Affordable Health Care for America Act, H.R. 3962. The bill of about 2,000 pages in length includes a "public health insurance option," managed by the federal government, that would authorize funds for elective abortions and a federal subsidy program for private plans that cover abortion.  Read article

Listen to healthcare legislation webcast

• REP. CHRIS SMITH, U.S. House of Representatives
• DR. DAVID STEVENS, Christian Medical Association
• MARJORIE DANNENFELSER, Susan B. Anthony List
• CHARMAINE YOEST, Americans United for Life
• KRISTAN HAWKINS, Students for Life of America
• DAVID BEREIT, 40 Days for Life
• KELLYANNE CONWAY, The Polling Company
• WENDY WRIGHT, Concerned Women for America
• DOUGLAS JOHNSON, National Right to Life Committee
• KRISTEN DAY, Democrats for Life

CMA Doctors: Sen. Harry Reid's "We'll Put Up If you Shut Up" Deal Won't Sway Principled Physicians

October 21, 2009 - CMA CEO David Stevens, MD: "Mr. Reid and his allies may be working behind closed doors on a clever way to pass healthcare legislation, but maybe they should be working on who's going to carry out their new scheme if over half the nation's physicians quit medicine." Read Full Release

NRLC: White House wrong on abortion funding

National Right to Life Committee - Many members of Congress, and the President, have suggested that the Hyde Amendment will prevent federal government funding of abortion under H.R. 3200. This claim is entirely erroneous. Under H.R. 3200, the new federal insurance program (the "public option") will pay for elective abortion with federal government funds, and public funds will also directly subsidize private insurance plans that cover all abortions. Read full text

  CMA physicians support conscience provisions to protect poor patients

September 30, 2009 - The 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA, www.cmda.org), the nation's largest association of faith-based physicians, today voiced support for the conscience-protecting provisions in the "Empowering Patients First Act," a bill introduced by Rep. Tom Price (R-GA 6th). CMA contended that the protections are needed to avoid a potentially catastrophic loss of faith-based healthcare on which millions of poor patients depend. Read CMA news release and letter

Washington Times: CMA commentary (Jonathan Imbody) on healthcare bills and abortion

September 21, 2009 - House and Senate health care bills are floundering because congressional leadership, mistakenly interpreting a vague "hope and change" sentiment among the electorate for a radical shift in American values, failed to discern the difference between "reforming" and "transforming" health care...  read full commentary

Weekly Standard: How many House votes will Obama lose because of its abortion subsidy?

Sep. 21, 2009, Volume 015, Issue 01 - According to soft-spoken pro-life Michigan Democrat Representative Bart Stupak, Barack Obama isn't telling the full truth when he says, as he did last Wednesday night, "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions" in the congressional health care plan.
"There certainly is public funding for abortion" in the House bill, Stupak told me the day after Obama's speech. The bill would allow both the public health insurance plan and federally subsidized private plans to cover elective abortions. Read full article

Freedom2Care sends petition update to President Obama

  September 15, 2009 - As coordinator of the Freedom2Care coalition of over 50 organizations, today the Christian Medical Association (CMA, www.cmda.org ) sent a letter to President Obama indicating that over 10,000 individuals have signed a Freedom2Care petition urging the President and Congress to protect conscience rights and stop abortion mandates. The letter to the President noted that "the problem of discrimination in health care and protecting conscience rights through both law and regulation are key to protecting patients' access to health care now and in the future." Read more...

Los Angeles Times: Abortion foes aren't buying Obama's assurances

Sep. 11, 2009 - "We think there is a very active effort to muddy the waters and to put out disinformation, and regrettably, the president has been part of that," said Johnson of National Right to Life.

Added Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life: "There is never going to be a bill that has 'abortion' written in capital letters with red arrows saying 'abortion here!' It's a technical issue that will come down to how the courts interpret it once it passes." Read full article

Freedom2Care presentation at U.S. Capitol educates Congressional staffers

  September 10, 2009 - Freedom2Care today briefed Congressional leaders and staff at the U.S. Capitol on the impact of conscience rights, currently under consideration in healthcare overhaul legislation, on patient access to care.
Freedom2Care Project Manager and Christian Medical Association VP for Govt. Affairs Jonathan Imbody explained in the presentation, "A faith-based healthcare professional is motivated by moral principles and faith teachings that include caring for the poor, treating each patient as a valuable individual made in God's image, and respecting the sanctity of human life from fertilization to natural death. What Congress needs to realize as it considers the role of conscience in health care is that all of these principles that motivate faith-based healthcare professionals come as a package. The faith-based healthcare professional does not and cannot separate his or her motivation for caring for the poor from his or her commitment to upholding the sanctity of life. That means that if legislation or regulations impair the faith-based professional's ability to base their medical practice on moral principles, they can no longer practice medicine." Mr. Imbody also provided Freedom2Care's national polling data on conscience rights and illustrated the personal impact of conscience rights on healthcare professionals. View presentation:  090910 Cong. briefing

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