Thursday, October 7, 2010
Good news from Europe
The Council of Europe amended the proposed conscience resolution to include this key provision:
[N]o person and no hospital or institution shall be coerced, held liable or discriminated against in any manner because of a refusal to perform, accommodate, assist or submit to an abortion . . . .
(Thanks to Gerry Whyte for the pointer.)
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/10/good-news-from-europe.html
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International prolife lobbyists just summarized the victory as follows. Note the role of "Catholic" and "human rights" organizations in the process:
"Pro-life Members of the Council of Europe led by Luca Volonte of Italy and Ronan Mullen of Ireland secured passage of 29 amendments which significantly altered the [anti-conscience] report to support the right of conscience. The report was rejected in the final vote as it failed to secure a two-thirds majority. [Proabortion report author] McCafferty and other pro-abortion Members were forced to vote against their own report. Vote tallies can be accessed on the PACE website. The McCafferty report, Women's access to lawful medical care: the problem of unregulated use of conscientious objection, was an attempt to pressure and penalize medical personnel who refused to participate in procedures or actions they considered to be unethical.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch lobbied in support of the report stating in a letter to the Council: "Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch share the deep concern expressed by the Committee about the increasing and largely unregulated occurrence of conscientious objection, especially in the field of reproductive health care, in many Council of Europe member states." Leading pro-abortion organization 'Catholics for Choice' (CFC) also lobbied for the report attacking authentic Catholic teaching on conscience while fraudulently presenting itself as the determiner of Catholic beliefs on conscience..."
How ironic that free conscience has been the rallying cry of Catholic liberals since Vatican II, and today it's AI and CFC defining conscience as a human rights violation, with only "conservatives" standing in their way. One might think that dissenting theologians and liberal Catholic magazines would be on the front lines of this battle, after all if people can be forced to kill what's an inquisition now and again. But at best there's a random, uncommon article on the topic in left leaning Catholic publications, and usually they speak even more dismissively or confusedly of prolife conscience rights than they do of stopping abortion itself. Query whether liberal Catholic belief in contraception cripples them against enthusiastically defending prolife medical conscience rights.