Trent's Blog
The Obama Economy, In Pictures
Posted By: Trent Franks on January 18, 2012
Filed Under: Taxes and Economy Taxes Economy Obama Presidency Debt Federal Budget
Obama Attacks Doctors' Rights of Conscience
Posted By: Rep. Trent Franks on March 3, 2009
Filed Under: Presidency Judiciary Religious Freedom Pro-life health care
Human Events
This week, President Obama begins his assault on centuries of legal precedent and medical ethics, pushing forward in his effort to roll back regulations that protect physicians' rights of conscience. The regulations prohibit recipients of federal funds from coercing professionals to perform services that violate their conscience, requiring certification that recipients of tax dollars neither discriminate against professionals of conscience, nor coerce professionals to perform services that violate their conscience. While Obama's strategy to upend these protections threatens many professionals (those sought to administer same-sex fertility treatments, assisted suicide, etc.), perhaps the most vulnerable in the immediate future will be America's pro-life OB-GYNs.
The physician's conscience is often the last line of defense for the vulnerable and therefore is the target of many political battles. The genesis of the immediate conscience rights battle is not well publicized. In October 2007, pro-abortion advocates from around the world met at the Women Deliver Conference in London to determine how to most efficiently roll out abortion on demand worldwide, whether through United Nations affiliated programs or otherwise. The U.S. had a large presence, with leaders from numerous pro-abortion organizations in attendance. As observed by conference participants, laws protecting rights of conscience in the various sovereign nations -- such as our cherished Hyde-Weldon Amendment -- are perhaps the greatest obstacles throughout the world to liberal abortion policy. In the United States, hundreds of years of common law tradition -- and that pesky U.S. Constitution -- thankfully stand in the way.
Though our law requires the government to respect the physician's right of conscience, the limits on discrimination by professional associations is less clear. It seems the pro-abortion forces are ready to test these waters. Within two weeks of the Women Deliver Conference, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists ("ACOG") issued Ethics Opinion #385 calling on OB-GYNs to disregard their medical, moral, ethical or religious objections to abortion by instructing them to perform or refer for abortions.
Almost in tandem with the release of ACOG's Opinion #385, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology ("ABOG") released its 2008 Bulletin for Maintenance of Certification. The Bulletin provides that a physician may have certification revoked, or be denied certification, if the physician violates “ACOG rules or ethics principles,” presumably to include Opinion # 385. Thus, though ABOG is the certifying body, ABOG may reference ACOG to determine standards for ethical behavior. The workings of these two organizations determine who is certified and who is decertified.
Under ACOG's guidelines, a physician who chooses to obey conscience (over the dictates of the few individuals who make up the ACOG Committee on Ethics) risks being accused and found guilty of "unethical" conduct. Deemed unethical, the physician could then face a loss of Board certification . Loss of board certification will almost certainly result in a loss of hospital privileges, and therefore, a loss of livelihood and career -- for refusing to perform or promote abortion.
With these pronouncements of ACOG and ABOG, the American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYNs ("AAPLOG") smelled blood in the water: their own.
The actions of ACOG and ABOG raised the specter that the country's 2000-plus pro-life OB-GYNs could be decertified and effectively put out of business, wondering how to feed their families. The message was loud and clear; Act according to your convictions, and you risk losing your career.
Thus began the push-back that would culminate in the issuance of regulations to insure that federal law protects pro-life OB-GYNs -- and others with a conscience -- who practice with entities receiving federal funding.
On December 7, 2007, dozens of civil rights organizations sent a letter to ACOG requesting that the attack on pro-life OB-GYNs be stopped through withdrawal of Opinion #385. Then, in March 2008, I and 15 Members of Congress followed up with a written request to ACOG for clarification that Opinion #385 would not result in decertification for pro-life OB-GYNs, in defiance of the Hyde-Weldon Amendment that we passed in 2004. Moved to action by this sequence of events, former Secretary Leavitt sent a written request for clarification as well, citing "an environment in the health-care field that is intolerant of individual conscience, certain religious beliefs, ethnic and cultural traditions and moral convictions."
ACOG finessed all such friendly requests, and ACOG Opinion #385 still stood. The Bush Administration saw that it had no choice but to issue regulations to safeguard rights of conscience.
Moving with the full knowledge that ACOG and ABOG have taken unprecedented action to threaten pro-life OB-GYNs with decertification, the Obama administration is signaling its approval. In a what is little more than a formality required by law, Obama is requesting input from the public over the coming days about the proper role of conscience in a free society. The question: Should government eliminate the specified protections for a professional who could be compelled to act against conscience -- even where the action is the taking of an innocent human life? Given the selection of Kathleen Sebelius to lead HHS, we can bet that the Obama answer to the Obama question will be a "Yes."
For the pro-life OB-GYN, there are two patients to consider in the case of a confirmed pregnancy: mother, and child. With this in mind, the physician must remain true to the Hippocratic Oath that has guided the medical profession for more than 2,000 years, the first admonition of which is "do no harm." Though long forgotten, the original Hippocratic Oath likewise contained an unequivocal prohibition against abortion. Therefore, the Obama regulation repeal would, in effect, permit punishment in the form of threatened or actual de-licensure for physicians who follow their Hippocratic Oath.
Loss of freedoms is one tragedy, but there is another; The price of this policy will surely be paid by the nation's women. If approximately 2,000 pro-life OB-GYNs hold fast to their conscience and are consequently put out of service, then the nation's critical OB-GYN shortage will be greatly exacerbated, particularly in underserved areas. Likewise, religiously-affiliated hospitals could have no choice but to close their doors. Ironically then, in this quest to subdue pro-life forces within the medical community, the clear casualty -- in addition to millions of unborn -- is women's health care.
Despite our minority status, Republicans in the House are not a passive lot. Last fall, I and 125 Members of Congress sent a letter to the Bush Administration urging the issuance of regulation to implement the conscience protections. President Bush did the right thing. So should Obama: Rather than politicizing medicine as a token favor to his friends at Emily's List, Obama should put fundamental freedoms and women's health care first.
Babies and Bibles
Posted By: Rep. Trent Franks on January 22, 2009
Filed Under: Presidency Pro-life
The Washington Times
Just two days ago Barack Obama took the presidential oath of office, placing his left hand upon the same Bible used by Abraham Lincoln at his first inaugural.
Today, as we mark the 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the tableau the world witnessed on the west front of the Capitol reveals much about the crossroads at which the country stands when it comes to protecting the most innocent among us.
A great deal of progress has been made to protect innocent human life in the thirty-six years since the Supreme Court said that the Constitution forbids laws protecting unborn life. From federal legislation such as the Partial Birth Abortion Act and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, to state-level initiatives such as mandatory sonograms and parental notification requirements, public opinion reflects the collective desire of an overwhelming majority of Americans to promote a culture of life, or at the very least, in the words of President Obama on the campaign trail, to make abortion rare.
A stated desire to make abortion rare is also a subconscious recognition that abortion is a wrong thing because it kills a child. Why else should abortion be rare?
But such a sentiment directly contradicts what our new President also promised on the campaign trail-- that his first act as President would be to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). Even more radical than Roe v. Wade itself, FOCA would repeal every state and federal law passed since 1973 that sought to make abortion rarer. FOCA would mandate abortion on demand to any person at any time for any reason or for no reason.
Can a president who views the question of when babies get human rights to be “above his pay grade” live up to the standard of presidential leadership set by Abraham Lincoln, in whose mantle Obama has sought to clothe himself these last several weeks?
If President Obama wants to live up to the Lincoln standard, we should clearly recall the Lincoln standard, in this, the 200th anniversary year of his birth.
A former one term Congressman from Illinois, Lincoln reengaged in political life in the 1850s as a response to the Supreme Court ’s 1857 decision in Dred Scott, which held that the Constitution forbade any laws to protect African-American slaves.
Again and again in his campaign speeches denouncing Dred Scott, Lincoln came back to the Founding Fathers and their belief in the equal, inherent rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, regardless of skin color. Lincoln believed the authors of America's Declaration of Independence got it right. He said:
"....In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began...."
Lincoln realized that despite the shifting tides of public opinion, the convention of partisan politics, and even the Dred Scott ruling, the question by which history would judge him was whether he had protected the inherent rights of liberty and human dignity , including recognizing Imago Dei - the image of a child of God -- in all of his fellow human beings , including slaves.
History indeed judged President Lincoln and found him faithful to the truth that our Founding Fathers enshrined in the Declaration, that all human beings are created equal. Today, how President Obama addresses the issue of abortion may well be the defining event of our generation, as slavery was to Lincoln's.
It rests in Mr. Obama's heart to decide whether our first African-American president will go down in history as one who found the courage to "look up again to the Declaration of Independence" and sparked a national epiphany that renewed our Founding Fathers noble battle to recognize and protect all innocent human life, including the unborn. Or will history remember President Obama as one who instead led the effort to sanction the continued destruction of the innocent unborn as the most radically pro-abortion president in our nation's history?
Perhaps the most bitter irony of this choice before President Obama is that it is African-American children who suffer the cruelty of abortion more than any other group of Americans. Approximately 50% of unborn African-American children in America are aborted before they are born. According to the 2000 census, African Americans comprise 12.3 percent of the U.S. population, but black women had 36.3 percent of the abortions that same year, as reported by the Centers for Disease Control. Every day, approximately 1400 African-American children are aborted; between 13 and 14 million black children have died by abortion on demand since Roe vs. Wade, a death toll perpetrated against the African-American community greater even than that of the scourge of slavery.
Such a mind-numbing reality probably occurred to very few of us as we watched the inauguration of our first African-American President more than 150 years after Dred Scott. However, a great and historic question relentlessly remains before America and all Americans. Are we still committed to the principle that "all men are created equal"; and will the nation that rejected the scourge of thousands of years of human slavery in the world also reject a bankrupt declaration by a 7-2 majority of Supreme Court justices that said the Constitution of the United States of America forbids laws protecting the lives of innocent unborn children of God? There is no doubt as to what Abraham Lincoln's answer would have been.
A Letter to President Obama
Posted By: Rep. Trent Franks on January 20, 2009
Filed Under: Pro-life Presidency
Human Events
Dear President Barack Obama,
History and the human family find themselves at a crossroads as you take the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States. I am told you are the first to request to be sworn in with your hand on the same Bible used by Abraham Lincoln when he took the same oath.
In the days, years, and generations to come, many voices will speak to the profound symbolism of this gesture on your part. History will also record whether or not you honored those noble principles held in the heart of Abraham Lincoln; that all of God's children have the right to live, and be free, and to pursue their dreams.
This is one Republican with the sincerest prayer that history will confirm that you did.
May I submit that the surest hope of such a confirmation is for you and the Nation to remember why we built that grand white granite memorial along the Potomac to Mr. Lincoln, and why we revere him so deeply.
We honor Abraham Lincoln most because he found within himself the humanity and courage to transcend the politics and convention of his day, to recognize the child of God in a slave, which both the tide of public opinion and the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision had declared to be a nonperson, and unprotectable by law.
History found Abraham Lincoln a faithful steward of the hope, human dignity, and deliverance of those who bore the image of God in the shame of slavery; and now it waits to witness President Barack Obama's stewardship of the hope, human dignity, and deliverance of those who bear the image of God in unborn silence.
Yes, it is true, Mr. President, that no issue since slavery has divided Democrats and Republicans so deeply as abortion. Yet, the two issues are so profoundly similar. In both cases, the innocent victims were arbitrarily dehumanized in the name of freedom. And yes, it will be easy for you to listen to the voices of those who still today, in the name of freedom, would deprive the innocent of both life and liberty. Certainly, their familiar phrases prevailed for a time in the days of slavery.
However, is it possible that in hindsight, and with the weight of history on your shoulders, that you might find the courage to reject this insidious deception that has crushed so many lives across history, and that relentlessly pursues this nation still?
Mr. Lincoln did. He said, "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not themselves, and under a just God, cannot long retain it." That is why we love him, and built our memorial to him.
So, as you lay your hand upon his Bible, Mr. President, may I adjure you to listen, in the stillness of your own heart, to the faint cries for mercy from those little souls who now look to you for hope; and to the words printed in red on the pages beneath your hand which will be declared again in eternity's final day;
“Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.”
Bush Administration Subordinates U.S. Law
Posted By: Rep. Trent Franks on October 15, 2007
Filed Under: Judiciary Immigration Presidency Crime
WorldNetDaily
George W. Bush is more than a president to me – he is a personal friend. I believe, however, that his advisers have done a grave disservice both to him and to the American people by crafting the administration's recently stated position before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Medellin v. Texas.
In the words of even the Department of Justice, the administration's recent actions represent a breathtaking and "unprecedented" exercise of executive power. Although I remain fiercely loyal to the president, I feel compelled, in accordance with my sworn duty to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, to respectfully register my objection.
For those who are unfamiliar with the case, Jose Ernesto Medellin is a death row inmate who was unanimously convicted by a Texas jury after initiating the gang rape and brutal murder of two teenage girls, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Pena. This horrific ritual was the centerpiece of a gang initiation ceremony. After he was arrested, Medellin confessed, even describing the incident as he and his friends having "had fun," and a unanimous Texas jury gave him the most severe measure of punishment for his grotesque crimes.
Following his conviction and appeal, Medellin contacted the Mexican Consulate to come to his aid, and this is where the current controversy begins. Medellin asserted that, as a citizen of Mexico, his rights under the obscure Vienna Convention on Consular Relations were violated in that Texas did not contact the Consulate on his behalf after his arrest, and that the United States must therefore "review and reconsider" his conviction and sentence as well as that of 50 other Mexican citizens. This would effectively mitigate the charges against 51 convicted rapists and murderers and overturn the decisions of state and federal courts; both Texas and U.S. law prohibit review at this late juncture.
Mexico then brought the United States to answer for the state of Texas before the International Court of Justice, or the World Court. The World Court sided with Mexico, calling for "the review and reconsideration" of Medellin's conviction. In response, the administration, while arguing that Texas was legally correct, nonetheless issued a two paragraph memo directing Texas state courts to follow the World Court's mandate. The administration claimed this right as central to its role in furthering the interest of international "comity." In so doing, it struck at the very structural limitations on government by allowing a federal official to improperly override a state official, as well as the executive branch to direct the judicial branch – and thereby abrogated the basic tenets of federalism and separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution:
I have determined, pursuant to the authority vested in me as president by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, that the United States will discharge its international obligations under the decision of the International Court of Justice ... by having state courts give effect to the decision in accordance with general principles of comity in cases filed by 51 Mexican nationals addressed in that decision.
In that breathtaking mandate, those in the administration acting on the president's behalf effectively subordinated U.S. law to the demands of international actors without a legal basis and the necessary consent of Congress. The administration's memo instructed Texas to disregard the statutes of the people's state representatives, decisions of the state and federal courts and any number of executive actors who factored into the process as well.
The precedent set by this action would permit a future administration, perhaps one of less scruples, to override state or federal law where doing so would be in accord with the international "principles of comity," whenever that administration thought it was appropriate in the interest of foreign affairs and international legal considerations.
There would be no end to the irreparable harm that could be done to United States law, in the interest of comity, wherever and however those interests could be found. Our Constitution provides that state law may not be overridden, as in the president's memo, without a duly constitutional federal statute being enacted by Congress first. This protection – the fundamental checks and balances and the separation of powers – is now in danger of being tossed to the wind.
We must now hope that the United States Supreme Court, crafted in large part by the president's own hand, will hand down a decision that not only protects our sovereignty and Constitution, but serves the cause of justice by which we are called to protect the innocent and the voiceless – including the two innocent young girls whose most basic right, that of the right to live, was mercilessly stripped from them.
In spite of the administration's egregious position in the case, if the Bush-crafted Supreme Court upholds the Constitution and rules against the administration's attempted mandate, we will ultimately thank the president for appointing justices who uphold the protection of the innocent, the rule of law and the cause of justice itself.
