Church and other mission oriented groups should work hard to maintain and strengthen their commitment to health care that is universal (not confined only to those who can afford it), and comprehensive (not confined to specialties thought to have distinctive appeal to mission oriented groups).
Only by being a mainstream contributor to health care across the board can churches make their optimal contribution to the quality and ethics of health care.
Without a grounded, informed Church voice on ethical issues in the public square it will be even more difficult for parliaments and courts to make the right decisions about ethical health care in the future. Health facilities, if run only by the State and the for-profit sector, would lack a critical dimension in some of the more difficult ethical debates on health care. Let's consider one recent case relating to parliaments, and another relating to courts.
Last year, the Victorian Parliament, while legislating for abortion on demand, went one step further, enacting its compulsory referral clause. This novel law requires any medical practitioner with a conscientious objection to abortion to refer the patient to another medical practitioner known not to have the same objection.
The provision is unnecessary and unworkable. That is why no proponent of the law, including the government, has been able to provide a compatibility statement pointing out how the law's interference with the right to freedom of conscience is justified under the Victorian Charter of Rights and responsibilities. The law has never been supported by the Australian Medical Association whose code of ethics imposes no such obligation to refer.
At the time of the parliamentary debate, some portrayed the objections to the law as emanating just from a group of religious zealots. The objectors could see that such a law would needlessly violate the consciences of some medical practitioners.
The Parliament's Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) raised questions about the new law at the time but the Parliament took no notice, the government declined to provide a statement of compatibility, and some ideologues said no such scrutiny or statement of compatibility was required.
In the light of sustained, reasoned critique of the law and the law making process, the Victorian Human Rights Commission has now expressed the view 'that SARC's interpretation of the Charter is preferable and that the bill should have been