Martha Coakley Attacks Pro-Life Catholics: "Don’t Work in an Emergency Room"
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
January 15, 2010
Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) — Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley is coming under fire today for comments showing her attacking the conscience rights of pro-life Catholics. In a Thursday interview, Coakley is asked whether doctors and nurses working in a hospital emergency room have religious freedom.
Because they oppose dispensing the morning after pill because it can sometimes cause an abortion she says Catholics should not be allowed to work in hospital emergency rooms.
In an interview yesterday with radio host Ken Pittman, Coakley comments on a conscience clause to allow pro-life medical workers to opt out of engage in actions that violate their deeply-held religious or moral views.
"In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom," Pittman tells Coakley.
She responds: "The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room."
The Senate candidate adds that there should be "separation of church and state" when it comes to the religious freedom of Catholics.
Coakley is drawing criticism from those who say she offended the 39 percent of the voters in Massachusetts who are Catholics.
Deal Hudson, a Catholic writer for InsideCatholic.com, tells LifeNews.com that there doesn’t appear to be "any limit to the anti-Catholicism of pro-abortion ‘Catholic’ politicians."
"If politicians like Coakley are put in charge of ‘health care reform’ the day may come when orthodox Catholics will be excluded from any medical services where they might decide not to provide an abortion, prescribe contraception, or euthanize a suffering patient," Hudson laments.
"Our country needs to wake up and realize the centrality of attitudes like Coakley to the entire health care debate," Hudson adds. "Coakley’s attitude is representative of dissenting Catholics in Congress from Speaker Pelosi to Senator Mikulski to Rep. DeLauro."
"Please, please realize it’s as bad as it appears to be — there are no excuses for this kind of ignorant comments. After all, Martha Coakley is the attorney general," he continues. "Doesn’t that position require some modicum of detachment from one’s own personal prejudices?"
Hudson recalled how only a short time ago Pelosi lectured Catholics on how abortion was supposedly a denial of free will.
"Coakley’s willingness to use her political power against orthodox Catholics serving in the medical profession should be a wake-up call," he concludes.
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Listen to the audio of the interview with Coakley –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifqXHqF5Q10&feature=player_embedded
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