Their choice vs. that other choice

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,
15 July, 2005
Reproduced with permission

Much of our modern political warfare is about language. We bicker about who is more devoted to individual liberty. Conservatives emphasize the value of allowing people to choose what to do with their own money and property. Liberals emphasize freedom in personal behavior.

But the words we use may mask what we truly value. To quote the great sage Humpty Dumpty, when we use a word, it means just what we choose it to mean - no more, no less.

Take the "pro-choice" community. So powerful is the lure of liberty that the champions of "choice" dare not speak its name.

They rarely mention "abortion," using, instead, terms like "reproductive freedom" (as if there were someone somewhere who advocated compelled pregnancy) and "women's health" (as if your wife could get something for that nagging cough at the local abortion clinic). They insist that the government "keep its laws" off your body. They say that it is not abortion they favor but freedom. The "choice" is the thing.

Well, not all choices. Some are beyond the pale. Consider the Conscience Protection Act, passed last month by the state Assembly and under consideration by the Senate.

Taken together with existing law, the act gives health care workers with moral objections the right to refuse to participate in abortions, sterilizations, stem cell research, cloning and euthanasia. The law would permit pharmacists to refuse to dispense "morning-after" pills but probably not conventional contraceptives.

Neither existing law nor its proposed expansion prohibits any of these things. The point is simply to ensure that individual health care workers may choose not to participate if their consciences so compel. Thus, it serves liberty. Certainly our friends in the "pro-choice" community regard this as a good thing.

Not on your life. Planned Parenthood, confusing choice with compulsion, calls it the "Patient Abandonment Bill." The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, again displaying its rather eccentric view of what is and is not considered individual liberty, opposes it.

Although much of the current controversy turns on the issue of prescriptions for contraceptives and abortifacients, the protections offered by the law are broader than that and so is the opposition.

The National Abortion Rights League, for example, characterizes current Wisconsin law that permits doctors and nurses who have moral objections to abortions to choose not to do them as an "anti-choice" law. All of these groups have supported forcing hospitals and other health care facilities to offer abortions. Apparently not all choices are equal.

In the parade of horribles offered by the advocates of "choice," respecting the rights of conscience of health care professionals will result in the unavailability of legal, but morally controversial, medical services.

But this would happen only if health care providers regarded a service (i.e., euthanasia, late-term abortion) as so odious that virtually none could bring themselves to do it. If that's the case, its unavailability may not be so horrible after all.

In any event, it is unlikely that every physician, nurse and pharmacist in the state will suddenly be transported by religious fervor and refuse to participate in those activities covered by the law. Doctors and nurses have had the right to refuse to participate in abortions - excuse me, "women's health care" - for almost 30 years, and there are still "reproductive health centers" in Wisconsin.

Opponents of laws like the Conscience Protection Act suggest that if a health care professional has a moral objection to such things, she should leave the profession. She can exercise her choice but only at the price of her livelihood. Cold comfort that.

In the world of the American Civil Liberties Union, virtually every type of discrimination would be prohibited except that practiced against those with the "wrong" religious and moral views. Roman Catholics, evangelicals and others with moral objections to the panoply of "choices" that are part of our brave new world should sweep streets or go into accounting.

As Orwell reminded us, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

The advocates of choice may want to keep the laws off your body, but they are quite willing to place them directly on your soul.

Rick Esenberg of Mequon is an attorney. His e-mail address is resenberg@wi.rr.com