Midnight Abortions - Stat!

Martha Coakley, the regrettable (for Democrats) candidate put forth by Massachusetts Dems to assume the legendary Senate seat of Teddy Kennedy, recently opined that Catholics ought not to work in hospital emergency rooms.  It seems Ms. Coakley frowns on Catholic concerns about dispensing emergency contraception.

Excuse me, "emergency contraception?" What on earth could this mean? In what sense is contraception administered on an emergency basis?  The very root meaning of contraception is "prevent inception." How many emergency care patients have a critical need to do that which might result in impregnation?

Well, I really don't know. Perhaps we can put up some stimulus funds to study the matter. I suppose that lying in those hospital beds, hooked up to resuscitators, heart monitors, and the like, can be a lonely business. A little loving on the side might very well be something people need.

But of course, this is not what Ms. Coakley envisions happening in emergency rooms. She sees rape victims, upon showing up at the emergency room, needing an abortion, and if Catholics are unwilling to dispense the little abortifascient pill, these emergency needs will go unmet. Someone needs to tell Ms. Coakley that abortion has been a legal right in this country since, oh, about 1972, a factoid that Ms. Coakley ought to be familiar with since she is the Attorney General of the State of Massachusetts. There is nothing that needs to be done at 2 am in an emergency room that cannot be done the next day, week, or month at the time and place of the victims own choosing.

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In fact, what Ms. Coakley is concerned about is something the Left usually doesn't acknowledge. Despite the coldly, clinical terms in which they talk about abortion, wherein it seems to be no more significant than the excision of a mole, for most women abortion is an extremely traumatic event, with painful feelings of guilt, anxiety, and depression that can last for years.  Ms. Coakley and her ilk, then, want to avoid this trauma by having abortions done quickly, in the emergency room, where the victims might very well not even understand the full import of the procedure. It's only a contraception pill, they'll be told, just like all those contraception pills people take every day. So much for informed consent of the patient.

And so much for a nuanced understanding of Catholics and those like Catholics who as a matter of conscience do not want to do such things.  If such people cannot get over their curious mental quirk over killing babies, then they simply ought not to work in hospitals.

Slipping an abortion on someone who doesn't know they are getting an abortion is as grossly an immoral act as can be imagined. Forcing people to choose between a job and violating their consciences is immoral as well, especially so when the choices are not mutually exclusive.  Yet this is where Ms. Coakley stood on this complex issue, at least until her thoughts went public. Then the Attorney General of Massachusetts discovered that Massachusetts law protects healthcare worker's right to refuse to administer emergency abortions, a "conscience" exemption supported, ironically enough, by the same Senator Ted Kennedy that Ms. Coakley gives salah to five times before breakfast each day.

She really ought to be ashamed of herself.