Banning Catholics from the ER

A few days ago, I posted a list of questions that Democrat Senate candidate Martha Coakley didn’t get asked during her debate with Republican Scott Brown. One of them was: “You criticize Scott Brown for ‘legislation that would allow hospital employees to deny emergency care to rape victims if it was their choice.’ Do you believe that doctors and nurses should be forced by law to provide contraception and perform abortions if they have moral objections to those treatments?”

Yesterday, Martha provided the answer during an interview with Ken Pittman on WBSM 1420 radio. She also provided a fascinating new theory of Constitutional Rights.





Ms. Coakley’s statements are so outrageous that your first reaction may be they were taken out of context. Here then is the entire segment in context:

Pittman: Would you pass a health care bill that had conscientious objector towards certain procedures including abortion?

Coakley: I don’t believe that would be included in the health care bill. I don’t understand exactly what the question is. I would not pass a bill as Scott Brown filed an amendment to say that if people believe that they don’t want to provide services that are required under the law and under Roe vs. Wade that they can individually decide not to follow the law. The answer to that question is no. And let’s be clear that Scott Brown filed an amendment to a bill in Massachusetts that would say that hospital and emergency room personnel could deny emergency contraception to a woman who came in who had been raped.

Pittman: Right, and if you are a Catholic, and believe what the Pope teaches that any form of birth control is a sin, you don't want to do that.

Coakley: No but we have a separation of church and state Ken, lets be clear.

Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.

Coakley: The law says that people are allowed to have that. And so then if you, you can have religious freedom, you probably shouldn't work in the emergency room.

Pittman: Wow. So if you have a religious conviction stay out of the emergency room.

Coakley: Well no, I’m not…you’re the one who brought the question up. I don’t believe that the law allows for that and I know that we accommodate all kinds of differences all the time. I think Roe vs. Wade has made it clear that women have a right to choose, and in Massachusetts, particularly if someone has been the victim of a rape, an assault and she goes to an emergency room to get contraception, someone else should say “Oh, no, I don’t believe in it so I’m going to affect your Constitutional rights?”

Since starting Nexus of Power, I’ve argued that the Brown/Coakley election is about freedom. If there was ever any doubt about that, Ms. Coakley’s comments should remove it. Her answer is yes, doctors and nurses should be forced by law to provide contraception and perform abortions even if they have moral objections to those treatments. Her argument is based on the curious notion that if a law gives one person the freedom to choose something - an abortion in the case of Roe v. Wade - then the law also requires other people to provide it, regardless of their personal convictions, and with no freedom to choose at all. A country that requires citizens to perform services that they consider sinful, and where citizens are barred from certain professions because of their religion, is not a free country. But that is the country Martha Coakley says she will build if we elect her to the Senate on January 19.

(For more on this subject, see my 2007 comments about a similar argument from Rudolph Giuliani)

An aside: Ms. Coakley also claimed that this is a matter of separation of church and state. Since most U.S. hospitals are not run by the government, it is difficult to see what that has to do with anything. Perhaps Ms. Coakley is looking ahead to the day when Obamacare puts the Feds in charge of the emergency room.