The Medical Right Wants to Deny You Health Care

This article was originally published on the website of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. You can read more about the right-wing assault on medicine here.

The Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA) is pressing a major campaign to demand that physicians be permitted to refuse medical care to patients. The organization has made this campaign a centerpiece of its activities.

In the past three months, the organization has launched a fundraising drive on the rights of Christian doctors to refuse to provide services, a special edition newsletter, a website collection of resources and documents, a survey of members, a letter-writing campaign , and requests for prayers.

Dr. David L. Stevens, the organization's CEO, said on April 17, 2008, that CMDA is making physician refusals a top priority, based on its Biblical beliefs. The issue, said Stevens, is "a battle to determine the very future of Christians in healthcare."

CMDA is a behemoth among the medical groups aligned with the Religious Right, which the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) terms the "Medical Right." With an annual budget in excess of $11 million, CMDA operates an extensive complex in Bristol, Tennessee, and maintains an office in the Washington D.C. area. The organization claims to have 15,000 members, although not all are doctors. Its mission is to equip physicians to glorify God, influence patients towards "a right relationship with Jesus Christ," and advance "Biblical principles" in healthcare.

The organization has been particularly incensed by a November 2007 report from the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). The ACOG report acknowledges that some doctors may ethically decline to provide abortions based on their beliefs or conscience but states that doctors are responsible for referring their patients to a provider who will perform the services.

CMDA opposes abortion and insists that referring patients for abortions is no different from performing them. "Though our members would comply with a request for transfer of a patient's medical record to another licensed medical practitioner, to refer a patient for an abortion involves moral complicity in the death of a human being," Stevens wrote in a letter to ACOG on April 9.

The April 17 CMDA "News & Views" newsletter notes that ACOG may "redo" the ethics opinion. But Gene Rudd, senior vice president of CMDA, said that the only acceptable ACOG response is a complete retraction.

"There is no way they can satisfy many people, including myself, if they want to compromise conscience," Rudd said.

In a press release, Rudd said he resigned from ACOG after the ethics opinion was released.

Using catastrophic language and heightened demands, Stevens sent a fundraising letter to CMDA members, declaring: "A dangerous new attack has been launched on our right to practice medicine according to conscience." He said: struggle for our 'right of conscience' is raging all around us -- and if we lose it, we may be denied admittance to training schools or even forced out of practice!" (as printed) Later, he adds, "Hyperbole? I wish it were."

CMDA said it intends to litigate, even to the Supreme Court, and to be "the ones framing the issues rather than those who seek to silence us."

Stevens also claims that Christians in general are at risk: "Christian doctors are the first line of defense in this battle. If we are ultimately stripped of a protection … then this right will soon be under attack in other professions, in our schools, and even in your church and mine!" So dire is the situation, he said, that "fundamental rights such as our freedom of speech will also fall like dominoes."

Jonathan Imbody, CMDA vice president for government relations, raised an implicit comparison between ACOG and Nazism in the April 7, 2008, CMDA newsletter. He quoted Pastor Martin Niemoller about the perils of not responding quickly to Nazi perils.