The Hypocrisy Revealed by Religious Supremacists in the Mifepristone Case
Yesterday, in FDA v. All. for Hippocratic Med., SCOTUS ruled against an association representing hypocritical doctors who asked SCOTUS to help them impose their religious views on other medical professionals. The quotations below are from SCOTUS’s opinion unless otherwise indicated.
“Four pro-life medical associations, as well as several individual doctors, sued the FDA.” They essentially sought to outlaw “Mifeprex” and “generic mifepristone” and to drastically restrict access to “generic mifepristone.” Their justification was purely religious: they “say that they are pro-life” because they supposedly “have sincere” beliefs that are “moral” and “ideological.” So (as SCOTUS emphasized with their italics) these doctors were abusing litigation to impose their religious “objections to mifepristone being prescribed and used by others.” These selfish, self-centered doctors were abusing their positions to impose their religious views on other medical professionals (and the patients of those other medical professionals).
None of the purported conscientious objectors ever actually had been compelled to do anything against their religious views. So the first point SCOTUS made was that they lacked “standing” to use litigation to impose their religious views on others.
The foregoing facts highlighted the litigious doctors’ absurd hypocrisy. They sought to use federal courts to impose their religious views on other medical professionals by invoking “federal conscience laws,” which “protect doctors from being required to perform” certain procedures or “provide other treatment that violates their consciences” in 42 U.S.C. §300a-7(c)(1). That law outlaws discrimination against “health care personnel” who “performed or assisted” or “refused to perform or assist in the performance of” certain medical “procedure[s]” because “the performance of the procedure” would be “contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
SCOTUS observed that “the federal conscience laws have” long “protected” so-called “pro-life doctors.” The “federal conscience protections” are for “the doctor’s beliefs” and provide “strong protection for conscience.” “The Church Amendments” protect “the doctors’ religious beliefs or moral convictions.” “Most if not all States have conscience laws to the same effect.”
One of the most remarkable aspects of the claims of the so-called “pro-life” doctors (purportedly guided by their “conscience”) was the particular medical care to which they objected. “The doctors contend that” use of mifepristone “will cause more pregnant women to suffer complications” and “those women” who are suffering “will need more emergency [medical care]. The plaintiff doctors say that they therefore may be required—against their consciences—to render emergency treatment.”
These doctors actually said that what they objected to was that their skills (and their availability in emergency situations) might result in their helping “women” who were “suffering,” and they were especially concerned that they might need to do so because of a medical “emergency.” “The doctors say” that “emergency room doctors summoned to provide emergency treatment may not have time to invoke federal conscience protections.”
The “doctors” were worried “that they could be forced to participate in” a necessary emergency procedure or provide necessary emergency “related medical treatment over their conscience objections.” For these doctors, the most important issue was their “consciences,” especially their “sincere” beliefs about “moral” and “ideological” issues. They believed their beliefs about “moral” and “ideological” issues were more important than the pain, health, safety and even the lives of patients.
Their own words are evidence of their hypocritical intentions (their actual plans) to violate their Hippocratic Oaths. The modern version of the oath includes the following: “I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required.” “Above all, I must not play at God.”
The hypocrisy of the doctors was not the only hypocrisy exposed by this litigation. About 33 times, SCOTUS’s opinion referred to “conscience,” including the expressions “conscience injury,” “conscience objection” or “conscience protection.” SCOTUS emphasized that this case is about “a conscience injury.” “So doctors would have standing to challenge a government action that likely would cause them to provide medical treatment against their consciences.”
The broader point that SCOTUS should have made is that this litigation was profoundly, egregiously and obviously unconstitutional. The federal conscientious-objector law protects people from discrimination based on their views of religion and conscience. It is a shield, not a sword. It does not—and it cannot—empower people to use federal courts to impose their religious views on others.
The Constitution repeatedly and succinctly addresses the relevant issues. Article VI emphasizes that “the supreme Law of the Land” is, first, the “Constitution” and only after that are federal “Laws” that were “made in Pursuance” of the Constitution. The first freedom secured by the First Amendment is freedom from religion: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Religious fanatics cannot abuse federal law and federal courts to override the Constitution to impose their religious views on other people.
The positions of the conscientious-objector doctors and of SCOTUS also belied the pretense that opposition to the medical procedures at issue was driven by anything more than religion (morals and conscience). In marked contrast, the SCOTUS justices in the Dobbs majority pretended that their decision was meant to promote legitimate public “interests” such as ensuring “respect for and preservation” of “life at all stages,” “the protection of” women’s “health and safety; the elimination” of “gruesome or barbaric” treatment by medical professionals and “the mitigation” of “pain.” They could not even pretend to be doing that in this case.
For more insights about the conscientious-objector doctors, their filings with SCOTUS are available for free. Just go here and search for one of the following docket numbers: 23-235 or 23-236.