please help protect health care provider's right of conscience

dear all:

The Obama Administration is in the process of eliminating the protections in place to affirm health care provider's right of conscience. Before the Administration can remove these protections through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Department must take public comment. You can comment up until April 9th by accessing the following website:

http://www.freedom2care.org/

Simply click on the appropriate button, "Patient" or" Health Care Provider," at the top of the web page under the heading, "Send My Message to the Government."

Regardless of our varying positions on abortion, I think we can all agree that we want our health care providers to be free to utilize their moral and ethical faculties when providing our care.

Please take action immediately. You can learn more about the issue and view the legislation to be rescinded at the above cite. The Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA) has also prepared several videos on the issue available at: http://www.cmda.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Right_of_Conscience&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=21504

This may not seem to have a lot to do with Matt, however, we believe this has everything to do with maintaining the freedom to object to participating in the elimination of babies just like Matt. By taking Matt into our home, we hope to in some small part follow the biblical mandate to overcome the evil of unwanted and orphaned children through the good of adoption. (Romans 12:21). The following is a statement by Mother Theresa that I believe sums up the connection b/w loving Matt and protecting the free NOT to participate in what we believe is unethical behavior:

Each one of us is here today because we have been loved by God who created us and our parents who accepted and cared enough to give us life. Life is the most beautiful gift of God. That is why it is so painful to see what is happening today in so many places around the world: life is being deliberately destroyed by war, by violence, by abortion. And we have been created by God for greater things - to love and be loved.

I have said often, and I am sure of it, that the greatest destroyer of peace in the world today is abortion. If a mother can kill her own child, what is there to stop you and me from killing each other? The only one who has the right to take life is the One who has created it. Nobody else has that right: not the mother, not the father, not the doctor, no agency, no conference, no government.

I am sure that deep down in your heart, you know that the unborn child is a human being loved by God, like you and me. How can anyone knowing that, deliberately destroy that life? It frightens me to think of all the people who kill their conscience so that they can perform an abortion. When we die, we will come face to face with God, the Author of life. Who will give an account to God for the millions and millions of babies who were not allowed to have the chance to live, to experience loving and being loved?

God has created a world big enough for all the lives He wishes to be born. It is only our hearts that are not big enough to want them and accept them. If all the money that is being spent on finding ways to kill people was used instead to feed them and house them and educate them - how beautiful that would be. We are too often afraid of the sacrifices we might have to make. But where there is love, there is always sacrifice. And when we love until it hurts, there is joy and peace.

--STATEMENT BY MOTHER TERESA SENT TO THE CAIRO INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT ON SEPT. 9, 1994

Loving Matt hurts like crazy, but I am confident this pain is a sacrifice God will use to bring joy and peace to all of us. Please help us to continue this work by allowing health care providers such as my husband to practice within the constraints of "do no harm."

"r"