Abortion is a matter of seemingly endless moral and political debate. In the latest round, the Republican controlled House has passed the Protect Life Act. Two of the main aspects of the act include preventing federal money from being used in health care plans that cover abortion and to allow health care workers to refuse to perform abortions. This includes cases in which an abortion is medically necessary to save a woman’s life.
The first aspect of the act seems to be at least partially a solution in search of a problem. The Affordable Care Act (known by the dysphemism “Obamacare”) already prevents public money separate from private insurance payments covering abortion. However, the is a common misconception (intentionally fueled) that “Obamacare” pays for abortions.
The act goes beyond this in an attempt to restrict coverage of abortion. The bill, if made into a law, would forbid women from buying private insurance plans including abortion coverage. This is, of course, limited to purchases made through a state health care exchange.
The main justification for this aspect of the bill is that the Republican backers claim that taxpayer dollars should not go to abortions. Of course, the bill goes beyond that and attempts to restrict women’s choices.
On the face of it, the justification has a certain appeal. After all, in a democratic (or republican) system, the taxpayers have a right to decide where their tax dollars are spent (and also to have a role in decisions in general-if only via representatives). As such, if the majority of Americans are opposed to having tax dollars go to abortion, then it would be presumably correct to not provide such funding. Majority rule and all that would serve as the moral justification. This would, of course, entail that the same principle should apply uniformly. So, for example, if the citizens did not want subsidies going to corporations or did not want to fun capital punishment, then such things should not be allowed.
In the case of abortion, most Americans hold that it should be legal. While this does not entail that they want to fund abortions, it would seem to indicate that abortion rights are accepted by the majority of Americans. As such, attempting to restrict these rights under the guise of keeping taxpayer money from funding abortion would seem to be somewhat deceptive. After all, it is one thing to prevent public money from being used and it is quite another to forbid women from buying private insurance with their own money. It is especially ironic given the Republican mantras about the free market and individual choice.
Also, if most Americans favor the legality of abortion and the Republican backers of the bill are claiming that they are right to impose restrictions based on the fact that some people are morally opposed to abortion, then it would seem to follow that anything that is morally opposed should not be funded. This would include capital punishment, war, the drug war and so on. In fact, it seems likely that very little would be left with public funding. Naturally, it could be argued that the moral opposition would need to be significant, but even under that condition capital punishment and many other things could no longer be funded with public money. Perhaps this would be a good thing-but I am reasonable sure that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans would be willing to accept this a general principle.
Perhaps the most controversial component of the bill is that health care workers who morally oppose abortion will have the legal right to refuse to perform abortions-even when doing so is medically necessary to prevent the death of the woman. Currently hospitals are legally required to perform abortions when doing so is medically necessary to saving the life of the woman. Some Catholic hospitals have been breaking the existing law for years.
On the one hand, a strong case can be made for allowing health care workers to decline performing an abortion on moral grounds. After all, a law that compels people to perform what they regard as an immoral action (such as fighting in war or paying taxes to support a war or what they regard as an unjust system) would seem to be well worth both moral and legal scrutiny. This matter has, of course, been addressed in regards to civil disobedience and the question of what a person should do when his/her conscience conflicts with the laws of the state.
In the case of non-emergency procedures, I am certainly sympathetic to the view that health care workers with strong moral beliefs should not be forced to engage in what they regard as an immoral action (most likely murder). Likewise, I am sympathetic to people who refuse to fight in war or support the state on the grounds that they regard the killing (or murder) of human beings as immoral.
On the other hand, a strong case can be made that professionals are obligated to perform their jobs even when doing so goes against their conscience. For example, a nurse who is opposed to drug use would not seem to have the right to refuse to treat a victim of a self-inflicted drug overdose of illegal drugs. As another example, a police officer who thinks that homosexuality is an abomination would not seem to have the right to refuse to protect a homosexual who is being beaten to death.
In the case of emergency procedures, a very strong case can be made that such procedures should be performed. On utilitarian grounds, performing such procedures would seem to be right. After all, the most likely result of not performing the procedure is that the woman and the fetus both die. The procedure would at least save the life of one person, which would presumably be a good action. To use an analogy, imagine that a child has been rigged with a terrorist bomb and is running at a woman. The bomb cannot be removed in time and will detonate in seconds. A soldier or police officer is nearby and can stop the child-but only by shooting her. The woman can, of course, scream to the soldier/officer that she would rather die with her child. However, it would not seem wicked of the soldier or officer to take the shot if the woman did not forbid it.
It can, of course, be argued that this is not a utilitarian matter but a matter of the action itself being right or wrong. If it is assumed that abortion is wrong because it is killing, it would seem to follow that not helping the woman would also be wrong-after all, this would cause her death.
At this point it is natural to bring up the stock distinction between killing and letting die. In the case of the woman, the medical care provider would be letting her die rather than killing the other being (which may or may not be a person). In general, our moral intuitions tend to indicate that killing is worse than letting die, which could be taken as a point in favor of allowing health care providers to let women die rather than perform an abortion. However, since the being will also die anyway (in most cases) it would seem that refusing to save the woman would (as noted above) merely double the number of deaths rather than do something that would be morally commendable. This could even be argued on the same moral basis as triage. In this case, the act could be seen not as killing the being, but saving the mother rather than allowing two patients to die. To use an analogy, if a mother and child were brought to a hospital and both were dying and the doctor knew that her choice was between saving the mother or letting both die while she worked to futilely save the child, then the right thing to do would seem to be to save the mother. Expending pointless effort on a child that could not be saved while letting the mother die would not be noble or good. Rather it would be a wrongful decision that would kill the mother. As such, this provision is clearly immoral.
