GUEST COMMENTARY: A matter of conscience

(UNDATED) Freedom of conscience today is universally recognized as a basic human right. But achieving that recognition was a centuries-long struggle — a struggle that was at the origin of why we exist as a nation. Today, that same freedom of conscience is being threatened by the Obama Administration as it seeks to rescind Health […]

(RNS2-APR06) Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., is the chairman of the U.S. Bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. For use with RNS-MURPHY-COLUMN, transmitted April 6, 2009. Religion News Service photo courtesy Diocese of Rockville Centre.

(RNS2-APR06) Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., is the chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. For use with RNS-MURPHY-COLUMN, transmitted April 6, 2009. Religion News Service photo courtesy Diocese of Rockville Centre.

(UNDATED) Freedom of conscience today is universally recognized as a basic human right. But achieving that recognition was a centuries-long struggle — a struggle that was at the origin of why we exist as a nation.

Today, that same freedom of conscience is being threatened by the Obama Administration as it seeks to rescind Health and Human Services regulations that guarantee conscience protection for healthcare workers. The public has until Thursday (April 9) to voice its objections to this move.


The protection of conscience finds root in our earliest days as a nation. Some of our first colonists were English Puritans, dissenters of the Church of England who fled their homeland “and all that was dear to them there … willingly conflicting with Dangers Losses Hardships and Distresses” that faced them in an unfamiliar new land. The Puritans’ “General Fundamentals” says they sought shelter on our shores so that they “might with the liberty of a good Conscience enjoy the pure Scriptural worship of God, without the mixture of human inventions and impositions.”

To the Puritans’ south, other colonists — this time mainly Catholic — were also seeking to live a religious life according to their consciences. To preserve that freedom of conscience, they adopted Maryland’s Act of Toleration, the first such one in our history. This act noted that coercing consciences in religious matters had “frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in those commonwealths where it hath been practiced.” The act declared that “no person or persons whatsoever within this Province … professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth be any ways troubled, molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof within this Province…”

Obviously, neither Plymouth nor Maryland had yet come to a full understanding of all the implications of the principle of freedom of conscience. However, both colonies provide ample evidence that if America turns its back on this principle, we would be unfaithful both to our origins and to the long journey toward a mature understanding of freedom of conscience.

This mature understanding conceives of freedom of conscience as a right that belongs to all individuals, irrespective of their religious faith — or lack of faith. This freedom is rooted in the inherent dignity of the human person. It involves, for example, the well-established right of conscientious objection to participate in warfare.

Another such right recognized in federal law for the last 36 years is the right of healthcare workers who have ethical, moral or religious objections to abortion to not be forced to participate in it, and to not face discrimination for exercising that right.

Even so, some state and local governments — as well as professional societies and advocacy groups — still attack conscience rights as though they do not exist. At the same time, many healthcare providers do not even know they have these rights. Enforcement is also hampered by undefined terms in the laws, and by failure to identify a federal office that is responsible for defending these conscience rights.


To clarify the laws, regulations adopted last year by the Bush administration define key terms: for example, they explain what kinds of healthcare providers are covered, and what it means to say that providers cannot be forced to “assist” in performing objectionable procedures. It requires certain recipients of federal funds to certify that they understand and will comply with the conscience laws, and it gives responsibility for enforcement to the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Civil Rights.

Despite attacks from politically powerful professional and advocacy groups that support unlimited access to abortion, the U.S. government surely has the obligation to stand by the right of conscience as one of the nation’s enduring first principles. We stand on the shoulders of women and men who left their homes and native lands so that they could not be coerced into worshiping at religious rites in which they did not believe.

Surely no Americans — individuals or institutions — should be coerced into taking, or supporting the taking, of innocent human life where they believe it exists.

(Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, N.Y., chairs the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.)

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