The worst is yet to come when so-called "conscience" laws enacted by the states allow health care professionals to opt out of patient care.
A frivolous example occurred in Florida, where Dr. Jack Cassell, a critic of health care reform, posted a sign on the door to his urology office that read, "If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now, not in four years"—warning off supporters of the president as a sign of his political conscience.
Now, more serious concerns are being raised about religious conscience being invoked to disregard legally binding living will instructions of patients who want family and medical professionals to suspend life support.
U.S. Catholic bishops have adopted a policy prohibiting removal of feeding tubes from patients who are unconscious but not dying, except in the rarest circumstances.
This applies to any patients in the care of a Catholic institution, including non-Catholics. The church's Directive 58 imposes "an obligation to provide patients with food and water, including medically assisted nutrition and hydration" even for "patients in chronic and presumably irreversible conditions who can reasonably be expected to live indefinitely if given such care." The document cites "physical discomfort" as one of the exceptions allowing suspension of care.
This obviously places a patient's living will on a collision course with religion.
In due course, this prickly confrontation will land in court, testing whether a patient's right to die takes precedence over a religion's "conscience."
