Austin, Texas, Jan 18, 2017 / 12:40 am (National Catholic Register).- When it came time for medical student Ashley Stone to apply to OB/GYN residency programs, she was determined that nothing would stand in her way – including her Catholic beliefs on contraception, sterilization and abortion.
“I’m normally really stubborn,” said Stone, 27. “[I thought] ‘It’s my right to go wherever I want.’”
Still, she wanted to get some advice from her medical school program director before she turned in her application.
“Here’s the thing: I don’t want to do these things because of my beliefs,” Stone told her director.
“Well,” her director told her, “you can’t come here.”
To be rejected out of hand by her own institution was frustrating, admits Stone, now a second-year resident at the University of Texas at Austin. But it was a frustration she was prepared for.
The negative reaction to her pro-life beliefs was “always apparent,” she said. “Even just going into the medical field in general [not necessarily OB/GYN specifically], you’re not ‘mainstream’” if you’re pro-life.
And that’s the inspiration behind the “Conscience in Residency” project. Created and managed by a small group of residency students scattered across the country, Conscience in Residency (CIR) is a web-based project that provides a network for residents “who want to practice medicine according to logical, well-formed, evidence-based judgments,” the site explains. It also provides research on subjects ranging from contraception and sterilization to gender-identity issues and homosexuality, giving residents facts to rely on when they have a challenging conversation about their beliefs.
“[Residency is] the most difficult period in being or becoming a physician,” said Cara Buskmiller, an OB/GYN resident at St. Louis University, who supervises the website.
“As a [medical] student, you’re not responsible for prescriptions. You can say what you think, and it doesn’t affect your becoming a physician. In residency, the program controls you a lot more. If your program is not open to you choosing things to do and not to do, you’re stuck.”
“Residents … are the bottom of the barrel: When the attending [physician] says, ‘Jump,’ they have to say, ‘How high?’ They have no protection,” agreed Dr. Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists.
Providers’ Rights
“In many residency programs, there’s tremendous pressure to participate in abortions. In some residency programs, even though it’s not legal, they’re actually required to participate. The laws in place right now have no private right of action [for residents].”
If “private right of action” is a phrase that rings a bell, it’s because of the Cathy DeCarlo case.
In 2009, DeCarlo – a nurse at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital – was forced to assist in an abortion in violation of her religious beliefs. When she took her case to court, it was thrown out because she had no private right of action.
This is precisely why Harrison urges support for the “Conscience Protection Act,” which would give health care providers the ability to file a civil suit if they feel discriminated against for their beliefs – as DeCarlo did, when she was threatened with charges of insubordination and patient abandonment if she did not participate in the abortion. Currently, health care providers who face discrimination for exercising their consciences have only one recourse: to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Conscience Protection Act is more needed than ever, in light of the recent redefinition of “sex discrimination.” Section 1557 of the outgoing administration’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act extends protections on the “basis of sex” to include – among other things – abortion. That means that a patient of a pro-life physician could sue for discrimination if the physician declines to perform a requested abortion.
“What we desperately need is a real protection of conscience, in law, that says we have the right to conscientiously object to the taking of human life – and a private right of action,” said Harrison. “Then we, as citizens, can protect ourselves.”
Foresight and Courage
In the meantime, CIR strives to provide solid research that residents can use to explain why they will not perform certain services or write certain prescriptions – and it provides support to medical students concerned about landing in a program that is receptive to their pro-life beliefs. In other words, said Buskmiller, it is a source of foresight and courage.
It was her own experience in medical school that showed her how desperately important foresight is for pro-life medical students and residents.
She was scrubbed up and prepared to assist on a caesarean section – but what followed was the patient’s tubal ligation. “The attending physician handed me a clamp. Suddenly, I’m holding a tube while they’re tying it off. Before I could do anything, it was over.”
Horrified, Buskmiller went to confession and had a long conversation with the priest. “My will was not there, but I sure didn’t say anything [to object],” she told him.
Grateful for the grace of confession, Buskmiller used that experience to spur her to have more courage – and to plan better for other situations that might try to force her to act against her conscience.
Though abortion, sterilization and abortifacients may be challenges specific to OB/GYN residents, many residents face similar challenges to their consciences, Buskmiller pointed out. Psychiatric interns might work with patients considering surgery to alter their bodies to resemble the sex they identify with, or recovering from it, for instance, and surgery residents might be faced with the surgery itself.
Recent legislation makes the situation seem bleak, but Buskmiller noted that it may actually be improving. An older attending physician once asked her how many pro-life residents were in training with her, and she counted between 15 and 20.
Pleasantly surprised, the physician said that there had been only eight during his own time as a resident.
And, Harrison pointed out, 85% of OB/GYNs do not perform abortions. “That’s a very reassuring number,” she said. “That tells me I am not in the minority; I am actually in the majority.”
Those kinds of facts are vital for health care providers to keep in mind – and perhaps especially for residents. It gives them solid ground to stand on – and it helps them realize that they are far from alone.
“The big myth is that somehow abortion is needed for medical care. It’s not needed for medical care,” emphasized Harrison.
“Chile has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, and abortion has been illegal since ’89. Same with Ireland – excellent maternal medical care, with no abortion [which remains illegal unless it occurs as the result of a medical intervention performed to save a mother’s life].”
“You don’t have to take the life of a patient to do excellent medical care,” she added.
“And that’s the truth.”
Article Archive
'Conscience in Residency' project supports doctors in training
Related Articles • More Articles
A patient at the new Misky María Palliative Care Hospital located on the outskirts of Lima, Perú. / Credit: Asociación de las Bienaventuranzas (Association of the Beatitudes)ACI Prensa Staff, May 4, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).In the context of the recent news of the death of Ana Estrada, the first person to request and receive euthanasia in Peru, there is a contrasting story to tell on care for the dying in that country: that of a new Catholic hospital on the outskirts of Lima that provides palliative care, which extends the love of Christ to those in extreme poverty who are in the final stages of their lives.The beginning of the 'Misky María' HospitalIn 2021, Father Omar Sánchez Portillo, a priest known for his extensive charitable work in the district of Lurín (south of Lima) and founder of the Association of the Beatitudes, had the dream of building a center to serve, with the "sweetness of Mary," people in situations of abandonment and extreme poverty who have terminal illnesses...
President Joe Biden presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Jesuit Father Greg Boyle on May 3, 2024. / Screenshot/public domainCNA Staff, May 3, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).The White House on Friday announced that Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, the founder of a prominent ministry dedicated to rehabilitating gang-affiliated youth, will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom alongside 18 other recipients this afternoon. Boyle, ordained a priest in 1984, founded Homeboy Industries in 1992 while pastor of Dolores Mission, a Catholic church and school in an area that at one time had one of the highest concentrations of gang activity in Los Angeles. Today, Homeboy Industries claims to be the largest gang-intervention program in the United States.The successful ministry, which now operates nationwide, offers training and job skills to those formerly involved in gangs or in jail, as well as case management, tattoo removal, mental health and legal services, and GED completion.Wh...
Father Roger Landry, Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, discusses the protests at Columbia University in New York City on EWTN's "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo" on May 2, 2024. / Credit: EWTN News The World Over / ScreenshotWashington, D.C. Newsroom, May 3, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).Father Roger Landry, a Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, said on Thursday that the protests making national headlines at the New York City school are being organized in part by "explicitly communist" outside forces. "There is an instrumentalization of what's going on in Gaza to advance an agenda," he said. "And that is to deconstruct our present world order at which the United States is considered the top of that order."Speaking on EWTN's "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo," Landry said that he had been walking through the encampment nearly daily, conversing with student protesters and other "outside agitators." While he said he believes that many of the protesters we...