The left wants to prohibit choice in medicine, by forcing doctors and health-care providers with religious objections to perform abortions. Who’s really anti-choice?

In response to various abortion legislation enacted in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, and other states, the left has called for a national day of protest on this Tuesday. The groups calling for the protest object to “Donald Trump’s anti-choice movement.”

The groups know of which they speak. The left wants to prohibit choice in medicine, by forcing doctors and health-care providers with religious objections to perform abortions. Multiple Democrat health-care bills would not only force taxpayers to fund abortions, they would commandeer doctors to perform abortions—not to mention other medical procedures that might violate their deeply held religious beliefs.

Existing Conscience Protections

Currently, two conscience provisions exist in federal law. The first, the Weldon Amendment, exists as a rider to Congress’ annual Labor-Health and Human Services (HHS) appropriations measure. This provision prohibits any government entity from “subject[ing] any institutional or individual health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the health care entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.”

The second conscience provision, the Church Amendment, exists in permanent federal law. It prohibits organizations from discriminating against individuals who refuse to participate in abortions or sterilizations. However, the Church Amendment’s provisions only apply to entities receiving grants or loans under certain statutes and programs:

The Public Health Service Act;

The Community Mental Health Centers Act;

The Developmental Disabilities Services and Facilities Construction Act; and

Contracts for biomedical or behavioral research under any HHS program.

The last three programs in particular represent a relatively small percentage of federal funding. And while the Public Health Service Act encompasses a broad set of programs, it does not contain nearly the amount of federal funding as larger entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid.

Single Payer Undermines Conscience Protections

Single-payer legislation in both the House (H.R. 1384) and Senate (S. 1129) would undermine conscience protections. These bills would create a new, automatic funding mechanism for the single-payer program.

Because the single-payer program would not get funded through the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, the Weldon Amendment conscience protections included in that measure would not apply to the program. For the same reason, the Hyde Amendment’s prohibition on taxpayer funding of abortion, also included in the Labor-HHS spending bill, would also not apply.

In theory, the Church Amendment conscience protections would still apply. However, these protections only apply to the discrete federal programs listed above, and therefore may not apply in all cases. Moreover, if existing federal grant programs get subsumed into a new single-payer system—as the sponsors of the legislation would no doubt hope—then conscience protections might go away entirely.

Medicare for America: No Conscience Protections At All

Eliminating conscience protections would fit the rubric established by the Medicare for America bill (H.R. 2452). As I pointed out in the Wall Street Journal last week, the legislation belies its “moderate” label, as it would ban all private health care. On top of that, language on page 51 of the version of the bill introduced earlier this month makes clear that conscience protections do not apply to any medical professional, under any circumstance:

(3) HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS.—Health care providers may not be prohibited from participating in the Medicare for America [sic] for reasons other than their ability to provide covered services. Health care providers and institutions are prohibited from denying covered individuals access to covered benefits and services because of their religious objections. This subsection supercedes any provision of law that allows for conscience protection.

Even more than the Sanders bill, this language makes clear: Doctors have zero conscience protections under Medicare for America, whether about abortion or any other issue. To put it another way, medical professionals can practice their faith for one hour at church on Sunday, but if they wish to live their religious beliefs, they must join another profession.

Philosophical and Practical Concerns

Beyond the moral concerns outlined above, abolishing conscience protections could come with very severe unintended consequences. More than 600 Catholic hospitals (to say nothing of hospitals with other religious affiliations) serve more than one in seven U.S. patients.

Would passage of these bills force these religiously affiliated facilities to close, rather than have the facilities and the professionals within them violate their consciences? And if facilities close, or doctors leave the profession rather than performing procedures that violate their deeply held religious beliefs, who will pick up the slack? After all, our nation already faces looming physician shortages, and the promise of “free” care under a government-run system will only encourage more consumption of health services.

Liberals might want to keep the focus on the state initiatives in Alabama and elsewhere. But forcing people to violate their religious beliefs, and potentially chasing doctors and nurses out of the medical profession as a result, represents the truly radical policy.