(DOWNLOAD) "Protecting the Other Right to Choose: The Hyde-Weldon Amendment." by Ave Maria Law Review # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Protecting the Other Right to Choose: The Hyde-Weldon Amendment.
- Author : Ave Maria Law Review
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 296 KB
Description
Consider a person who has undergone the necessary training to join the ranks of emergency medical technicians ("EMTs") who are committed to saving lives across the nation. (1) Now consider that this person is asked to respond to a non-emergency call to transport a patient from a hospital to an abortion clinic for an elective abortion. (2) The EMT informs her employer that transporting the patient to an abortion clinic for an elective abortion directly contravenes her moral convictions. In response, the employer immediately fires her. This Note discusses the conflict surrounding a law designed to protect those who, like the EMT, are discriminated against because of their conscientious objections to abortion. The provision that affords this protection is known as the Hyde-Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment ("Hyde-Weldon Amendment," "Amendment," or "Hyde-Weldon"), (3) named after the two Republican Congressmen who sponsored the Amendment, Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois and Representative Dave Weldon, a Florida physician. (4) The Amendment, which passed in December of 2004 as part of an appropriations act, (5) prohibits the disbursement of Labor, Health, and Human Services-Education ("Labor-HHS-ED") funds to federal agencies, federal programs, and state and local governments that "discrimin[ate] on the basis that the health care entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions." (6) In other words, it is anti-discrimination legislation. Now, a government agency wishing to force a hospital, doctor, or similarly situated health care entity to provide, pay for, or refer for abortions cannot do so if it wishes to receive federal funding. The provision is strictly limited to these circumstances. Representative Weldon noted "that the provision applies only when a 'healthcare entity' refuses to provide abortion services, and a government tries to force it to do so. 'Therefore this provision will not affect access to abortion or the provision of abortion-related information by willing providers."' (7)