CMA Executive Director Dr. David Stevens said, "For years now, ACOG has tried to promote abortion on demand as a matter of free choice. We've always known that abortion affords no choice or rights to a developing baby. Now we learn that ACOG would also strip choice and rights away from the very physicians it claims to represent. This is not only the height of hypocrisy; it is also a sure-fire way to lose more physician members who value their constitutional and professional rights of conscience."

In an Aug. 30 letter to U.S. senators from ACOG President Dr. Michael T. Mennuti, ACOG asserted, "Doctors who morally object to abortion should be required to refer patients to other physicians who will provide the appropriate care." In his letter, Mennuti advocated that the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act, which Congress passed to protect the conscience rights of healthcare professionals and institutions, be changed to force physicians to refer patients for abortions.

Stevens noted, "If a physician is morally opposed to abortion, why would that same physician violate his or her conscience by referring a patient to an abortionist to end the baby's life? And what kind of nation would force its physicians to violate their consciences and their Hippocratic oath by mandating participation in abortions?"

CMA Associate Executive Director Dr. Gene Rudd, an obstetrician and gynecologist, observed, "For years, many of us who have belonged to ACOG have hoped to change the organization from within, hoping that reason and Hippocratic values would prevail over the organization's strident and inappropriate abortion advocacy. It has become clear that in the blind pursuit of abortion at any cost, the ACOG leadership is ready to sell out its own membership by advocating laws that remove the rights of physicians. With more and more physicians morally opposed to abortions, this move for mandates simply shows the desperation of abortion advocates to enforce their agenda by any and all means."