ALFI Commends HB 5028’s Approval at the Committee on Health

May 23, 2006


.: Read ALFI's Press Release on HB 5028

.: Download a copy of the ALFI Position Paper on HB 5028 (May 23, '06)

It’s Time to Protect and Defend the Consciences of Our Medical and Health Workers

Honorable Legislators, we come before you on behalf of the ALLIANCE FOR THE FAMILY FOUNDATION PHLIIPPINES (ALFI) in defense of the FILIPINO FAMILY and LIFE. We support House Bill (HB) 5028 and any other Substitute Bill/s and request a review of the implications and consistency of this Bill in relation to any other proposed Bills. There are other proposed Bills that may infringe on the protection against discrimination proposed by HB 5028 for medical and health workers who act on their right of conscience.


I. Basis of support. The basis for our support of HB 5028 are as follows:

1) Respect for conscience has never been controversial, nor should it ever be. HB 5028 recognizes a basic principle: that no one, least of all a medical or health worker who is committed to heal and preserve life, should be forced to violate his or her conscience by participating in procedures that he or she deems harmful or morally wrong. HB 5028 shows concern for the ethical integrity in the medical profession. It also shows respect for religious freedom.

2) Institutions should also be protected from coercion in terms of certain mandatory health care. Employers may not wish to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, voluntary sterilization or ligation, for example.

3) Declining medical information for these services on moral grounds is permissible. HB 5028 allows a health or medical worker to decline to provide information about certain medical procedures on moral grounds. This includes the withholding of referrals to other providers as alternatives. Again, this protects the provider from acting contrary to his conscience. Karen Bauer, President of Pharmacists for Life in the United States, believes that a pharmacist should not only refuse to dispense medication based on conscience, but that providing referrals “would be like saying, ‘I don’t kill people myself, but let me tell you about the guy down the street who does.’”1 In other words, if a medical worker refers to the patient to someone else who will then provide the act he morally objects to, he becomes an accomplice to the crime subsequently committed by the patient and his health worker.

II. Counter-arguments to Possible Objections. We anticipate a few possible objections to HB 5028, so we are providing our counter-arguments in advance:

1) That patients have the right of access to medical care, and protecting a health worker’s right of conscience would endanger the lives of patients.

HB 5028 does not contradict the need to provide quality health care to patients, nor does it contradict any existing civil laws on medical malpractice. Individuals and institutions do not lose their right to exercise their moral and religious beliefs and conscience once they decide to become health care providers. The law should protect them from discrimination and undeserved legal attack. Patient’s rights to particular procedures are never paramount and cannot trump all other considerations, including the moral or conscientious objections expressed by medical or health workers.

Consider also the elective and voluntary nature of the medical procedures proposed for protection from coercion in HB 5028, namely artificial birth control, abortion, sterilization, ligation, artificial insemination, assisted reproduction, human cloning, euthanasia, human embryonic stem cell research, fetal experimentation, and physician-assisted suicide. None of these procedures or products can be described as mandatory for any patient.

Moreover, none of these are life-threatening, if withheld. As pointed out in the Explanatory Note of HB 5028, some of these acts are actually life-destructive and not life-saving. Thus, “certain demands of patients…must not be blindly accommodated to the detriment of the rights of health care professionals.”1

Finally, at the beginning of the relationship of a patient with his medical or health worker such as a physician, the medical or health worker may limit the extent and scope of his obligation to treat the patient. This is also true for hospitals, pharmacies, and so on. Neither physician, hospital, nor hospital personnel should be required to perform any act that would violate deeply personal beliefs founded on moral principles. Thus, Section 4 (b) of HB 5028 prospectively defines the limits of medical procedures, including the capacity to exercise conscientious objection, through the use of the consent form.

Lastly, as stated by The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, “…forcing people to violate their consciences forces them to deny their uniquely constructed self-identities and is unjust. The more traditional justification for freedom of conscience is the right of all humans to serve God before people, and the ultimate futility of government demands to the contrary.”2

In a free society, it is indisputable that any “created right” would ever overcome the fundamental human right of conscience.


2) That not all these medical procedures are legal in the Philippines anyway.

HB 5028 is comprehensive and forward-looking. It wishes to anticipate the mere possibility of legalization of abortion, human cloning, euthanasia and such other acts, so that there is no deprivation of the rights of conscience of health and medical workers should this legalization ever occur.

Even in the United States where there is a long-established legal tradition on conscientious objection, it is acknowledged that “As the range of medical technologies continues to expand..., the number of medical services involving potentially serious conflicts of conscience is certain to increase.”1

III.Suggested Revision.

Please replace the term “assisted reproduction” with the terms “in-vitro fertilization and other methods of assisted reproduction,” since the medical term “assisted reproduction” includes artificial insemination, which has been separately listed in HB 5028, and drug therapy, which may not necessarily be objectionable.

IV. Conclusion

HB 5028 is good public policy, because it recognizes the fundamental freedom that individuals cannot be forced to act against their conscience, and that a conscientious objection can be made without fear of any adverse action being taken against them.

With new organized threats to conscience on the horizon, it is especially important for the Philippines to affirm conscience protection to our valued medical and health workers.

Submitted by:

The Alliance for the Family Foundation Philippines

.: Read ALFI's Press Release on HB 5028

Download a copy of the ALFI Position Paper on HB 5028 (May 23, '06)