The shit hath officially hit the fan. Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released their proposed regulations (you can read them here) to allow health care providers to refuse to perform abortions, or refer women to others who might.
While we've been anticipating this, that doesn't make it any less upsetting. The title of the HHS release is enough to make one fume: "Regulation Proposed to Help Protect Health Care Providers from Discrimination." That's right - Discrimination. And though the regulations don't define contraception as abortion, the ACLU thinks there could be some wiggle room.
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt also blogged about the release yesterday as well, saying:
"This became a topical matter when the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued guidelines that could shape board certification requirements and necessitate a doctor to perform abortions to be considered competent."
Which is actually anything but the truth - ACOG actually doesn't have the power to take away board certifications. But the HHS is using this to create the illusion that providers' rights are under vicious attack, when in reality the regulations are the offense, blatantly threatening our reproductive freedoms - particularly for uninsured and low-income women. Louise Melling, Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project made a statement in their press release:
"For years, federal law has carefully balanced protections for individual religious liberty and patients' access to reproductive health care. The proposed regulations appear to take patients' health needs out of the equation."At a time when more and more Americans are either uninsured or struggling with the soaring costs of health care, the federal government should be expanding, not hampering access to important health services."
Amen to that. Take action on these regulations by telling HHS and your members of Congress that women's access to reproductive health shouldn't be compromised.
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I don't necessarily think that the government should be the ones regulating the medical profession (since this is what happens when they do), but I do think that there should be guidelines set up (within the AMA) that make a clear point about a woman's reproductive rights.
If a doctor believes that he can refuse service to people who needs it, (s)he is mistake about the nature of the medical profession, and needs to look into a different career.
I want these people to live in a town where the only health providers and pharmacists are Christian Scientists who tell them that the answer to their heart attack (etc.) is God and more faith, and they run from clinic to hospital to pharmacist without getting any medical treatment and they die a hideous death from the inside out.
Is that harsh? Ask me if I care.
Amy:
That link is full of your personal information.
Site moderators, in case she doesn't see it will you delete her comment? I don't know what the actual address is for the planned parenthood form, but I'm sure she didn't realize what she was linking to contained her info.
I am so upset. Christianity, whatever positives it has provided humankind, has morphed in these people's hands into a well-oiled hate machine. All I can think of is that scene in The Color Purple where Celie curses Mister with, "The jail you plan for me is the one you gonna rot in."
The government should NOT regulate any medical issues especially by threatening those issue for women!
I also signed the petition and hopefully it does some good...
Thank you so much, madhattress. I completely didn't realize what that link contained.
Why is it these so-called "conscience clauses" only seem to apply to women's reproductive issues? Doctors would not be able to get away with this in other arenas. An ER doctor, for example, couldn't refuse to give someone a life-saving transfusion if it was against his or her beliefs, and they also cannot force the life-saving transfusion on a patient whose beliefs forbid it. So why can they object to prescribing birth control or performing abortions and force pregnancy upon a woman? If you're going to be a doctor you'd better be able and prepared to deal with the realities of peoples' lives and the choices they make and not pass judgments on them.
I feel like this legislation can also open up a whole can of worms. For example, Scientologists usually don't believe in psychiatry... so will a pharmacist or doctor who practices Scientology soon be allowed to refuse anti-depressants from patients? It really scares me. I vote that those in the health care profession do their jobs, and leave personal morals and beliefs OUT of it. Do what's best for the patient, please.
**took action**
Christianity is not based in "Christ" anymore. It is warped, twisted and mutilated as we all know. I am not Christian but my spiritual life is with the Earth as a Native American. I do know that Christ is love and I feel like many Christians have an intense amount of hate and judgment towards others. I can't stand the push of this religion on my life, I have had enough - especially now with the push into my reproductive rights.
What the hell happened to 'standard of care'? That's the way my Muslim doctor practices, even though her beliefs state that abortion is forbidden from 40 days after conception. I asked her what she would do if a patient came to her at the Catholic hospital clinic where she works, asking for an abortion, and she didn't even have to look up the nearest places for abortion care-she already knew them.
For an awesome Canadian perspective, check out the link in my name.
Done. Thanks for posting this.
And in this link, the Canadian Medical Association Code of Ethics.
Stupid links didn't work.
http://policybase.cma.ca/PolicyPDF/PD04-06.pdf
http://www.sogc.org/jogc/abstracts/full/200611_WomensHealth_4.pdf
Pro-choice means freedom of choice for everyone. It is as unfair to force a health care worker to perform a non-life threatening procedure s/he disagrees with as it is to prevent women who want abortions from getting them.
Undoubtedly this means that people will have to live with a bad decision, or sometimes just plain bad luck, but you can't really expect health care workers to check their conscience at the door.
As long as this regulation doesn't make contraceptives like Plan B into abortion, and is limited to non-life threatening procedures, its really the only conscionable choice. This is a free market, and in a non life-threatening situation, patients are free to find a provider comfortable with the procedure.
And, yes, firing someone who's a 'conscientious objector' is discrimination.
While I do think it's fair to say that doctors shouldn't be legally required to perform procedures to which s/he may be morally opposed (I wish though, that there were any other examples besides abortion) I do think that if they will refuse treatment, they MUST be legally required to refer you to someone who will do it, within a reasonable amount of time (so, they should hand you over to someone who will perform your abortion in the same trimester.)
I'm waiting to see what happens if morality is ever an issue for any other kind of procedure. Are there Jehovah's Witness doctors who will not give blood transfusions?
I'm taking action right now.
I took action using the "telling HHS" link (the first "Take action" link is still speaking about the regulation in "proposed" terms). I'm with leigh - why do "conscience clauses" only ever apply to denying women reproductive health care? This new rule makes me so angry!
Pro-choice means freedom of choice for everyone. It is as unfair to force a health care worker to perform a non-life threatening procedure s/he disagrees with as it is to prevent women who want abortions from getting them.
I disagree, sly. This isn't a case of people forcing all doctors to perform abortions. It's about whether or not the owner of a practice can hold their employees accountable for failing to perform their jobs.
Essentially what this legislation is saying is that any person in the healthcare chain can refuse to perform their perfectly legal job if their "beliefs" disagree with it, and nobody can punish them, fire them, or anything else for it. We're not talking cases where people are fired simply because of issues that don't affect their work (religion, sexuality, gender identity, etc.), we're talking employers who are literally forbidden from punishing or terminating the employment of employees who refuse to work.
There's nothing anyone can do to a doctor who works for themselves to make them do procedures they don't want to do. Likewise, if the policy of an practice or hospital forbids the staff from performing certain procedures, patients are screwed there as well. But this is a case of the practice or hospitals being comfortable performing procedures, and employees that refuse to do it can't be held accountable for their refusal. If the employees don't like the policies of their workplace, they need to look elsewhere, and it's unfair to both the patients and the employers to force them to employ ineffective people.
It's wrong. What's next? Refusing to treat a gay patient with cancer? Refusing to provide pre-natal care to a pregnant woman because she's not married?
I love how so many of these regulations that would be most harmful to poor women use this rhetoric of resistance, trying to construct their arguments as some sort of alternative rhetoric against a mainstream, dominant society that is conspiring to discriminate against and bring down the Christians. This rhetoric is used by the religious right all the time: "It's us against a sinful, hate-filled, godless society. Everyone else is busily engaged in immoral acts and debauchery and making pacts with the devil; we are the minority who knows what's right and who want to be good, and society is against us. Everyone is free except for us." wtf, Righties. You ARE society. You ARE the dominant rhetoric. You have so many privileges in this country due to your Christianity that I can't even count. Asking Christian doctors and pharmacists to do their frickin' jobs - the jobs they signed up for - is not discrimination.
As another respondent mentioned, I think having the right to deny women contraception/abortion is easily analogous to denying people AIDS treatment/medications because the doctor suspected that the patient contracted the disease by having gay sex. A pharmacist suspects a woman is using her oral contraceptives AS contraceptives, even if she isn't sexually active; a pharmacist suspects a gay person got his/her AIDS by having gay sex, even if this wasn't the case. The abortion part is perhaps a bit different. One can't deny that it's being used to end a pregnancy, whereas many non-sexually-active women DO take oral contraceptives for other reasons. But still.
What's this?
http://www.al.com/newsflash/national/index.ssf?/base/national-108/1219080260213530.xml&storylist=national
Oh, it's just Christians refusing to treat homosexuals. How far would they go? Would they believe the Lord smote them with AIDS and believe they would be allowed to refuse them treatment and deny them referrals? Their poor consciences. Do they have them?
And some comment on story:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/08/thank-cheesus-some-good-news.html
Sly, if there were a movement by Christian Scientists and Scientologists to fill as many health care/pharmaceutical positions as they can--and they can't be discriminated against by the fact that they believe that doing their job is against their beliefs, so they could easily be hired under this mudslide proposal--and deny healthcare to everyone, do you still think that's a matter of conscience? That's insanity. I shouldn't have to live in that world. I'm being discriminated against as a woman because I am the only sex that has to face that decision. "Live with a bad decision"? Why, in this age of technological advancement, should anyone have to live with a "bad" decision for the rest of their life? Why does anyone else get to decide that for individual women, when women are the ones who have to deal with the consequences? Referrals, even? Really.
This business of it's okay so long as they don't equate Plan B with abortion is hilarious. What are you going to do when they do? Say, "Hey! That's not fair! I said you shouldn't do that!" Do you think they care what you think is fair? Women must be saved by giving birth. They are evangelicals looking to save people. And they will rape us mentally, spiritually and physically to get through to us.
Because they are power-mad assholes for the lord. And the lord is male, so the scales aren't balanced. Patriarchal religions are built for patriarchal dominance.
But we are the majority.
manifestdestiny is right. also allie and allegra.
this is absurd.
and sly, it's also worth noting that the health care market is NOT free. most of us can only choose from certain insurance plans that our employer pays for if we want the employer to pay. HMOs require you to go to only doctors in their network. not everyone lives in a city where if they're turned down by a fundie wackjob doctor/pharmacist/etc they can just go down the street to another option.
Thank you, rileystclair.
"Pro choice means freedom of choice for everyone."
Que?! Since when does pro-choice signify something other than a movement to keep abortion legal and safe in this country? Where do you get the idea that its meaning can be usurped to represent a movement to keep people from being discriminated against for discriminating against women?
My primary care physician refuses to take new patients that are smokers unless they are actively trying to quit. She says she will not waste her time caring for people who squander their health. Should this be allowed?