Don't force health care providers to counsel on abortions

Illinois SB 1564, a proposed amendment to the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscious Act (HCRA), recently passed the Illinois Senate and is now under review by the House Human Services Committee.

This bill, if passed by the Illinois House and signed by the governor, would erode the freedom of conscience for health care providers - including the right not to counsel or refer for conscience-violating services, which has been statutorily protected in Illinois for nearly 20 years.

Instead, it would create new obligations for health care providers to participate in conscience-violating activities. Under current law, health care providers are protected against participating in any phase of a health care service that would violate their sincerely held moral convictions, including counseling, referrals, or any other advice.

The law respects a health care providers conscientious determination of what constitutes his or her complicity.

That same existing law already ensures patient safety is not compromised by clarifying that physicians are not relieved from a duty to inform his or her patient of the patient's condition, prognosis and risks.

The law also clearly provides that health care personnel are not relieved from "obligations under the law of providing emergency medical care.."

The problem with SB 1564 is that it would require pro-life health care facilities, many of which are nonprofits like crisis pregnancy centers, which do not offer abortion services and which exist to care for women with unplanned pregnancies and ensure that they are provided with alternatives to abortion, to either refer them to a facility that will perform abortions, or provide them with a written list of such facilities, and to also discuss so-called "benefits" of abortion, not to mention the added cost burden to implement these new requirements.

These burdensome requirements are obviously contrary to the right of conscience for which the HCRA was enacted in the first place. They also violate the right to free speech, including the right NOT to speak on a given topic as dictated by one's conscience, protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Finally, with over 57 million abortions performed in the U. S. since Roe v Wade it does not appear that anyone is having difficulty in finding abortion providers.

Does the State of Illinois really believe it is necessary for pro-life organizations to have to violate their collective conscience and tell clients about the benefits of abortion and where they can get one?

Jeff Tenwinkel

Hoffman Estates