Targeting Freedom Of Conscience

To the Editor:

Senate Bill 685, “An Act Concerning Compassionate Care for Victims of Sexual Assault,” is not only wrongly named, but is also a serious problem for anyone who believes in freedom of conscience. It concerns the “Plan B pill” and demands that every hospital give it to rape victims.

 Though it purportedly is aimed at all hospitals, in reality it impermissibly targets only the four Catholic hospitals in Connecticut. These hospitals already administer Plan B to rape victims! In a survey of the four Catholic hospitals — and note that these are private hospitals — covering most of 2006, there were 73 rape victims admitted. Twenty-six were provided with the Plan B pill; the others had no need of it for different reasons; and precisely zero were refused Plan B.

 However, there are rare cases in which the pill does not act as a contraceptive, but actually causes an abortion, as stated on the manufacturer’s own website. This possibility is determined by the LH Test. In those rare cases, and if the woman wants the pill — again, there were zero during the survey period — she is transferred by the hospital to the nearest place where she can get the pill. There have been no complaints about this protocol, according to the Connecticut Victim’s Advocate James Papillo — although for his audacity in telling the truth, Lieutenant Governor Kevin Sullivan wanted him fired!

 Why should non-Catholics care about this blatantly unconstitutional infringement upon religious freedom and freedom of conscience? Because these freedoms are absolutely imperative in any form of government.

 Two thousand years ago, Christians agreed to obey the laws of the Roman Empire, except the command to burn incense to the Emperor as a deity. For refusing to accept the totalitarian demand, held also by 20th Century Nazis and Soviet Communists, that there is nothing higher than the state, they were brutally murdered in scores of ways in persecution after persecution.

 More recently, the abolitionist movement and the civil rights movement were entirely based on the belief that there is something that can critique the state, whether you believe that it derives strictly from reason, or from a combination of reason and the law of God, as Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi believed. Conscientious objector status (e.g., for Quakers during the draft) has a long tradition in the free world. There is a good reason that Article 18 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights specifies the “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion.”

 There are many variants of a World War II poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoller (“They came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew…. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up”). Opposition to this ill-conceived bill, born of bigotry, based on deliberate lies about the Catholics hospitals’ compassionate protocol, and proposed for no compelling health or safety reason but merely to target one specific group and deny them constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, should be a common cause for all – religious or not – who believe in freedom. Otherwise, next time it could be your conscience that is on the line.

Mary Taylor

31 Jeremiah Road, Sandy Hook                                                                      March 5, 2007