Bush Administration vs Reproductive Rights, Chapter #2742

[browngirl]

"The Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control."

From a little further down in the article, discussing the proposed rule changes: "Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents providers, said, “The proposed definition of abortion is so broad that it would cover many types of birth control, including oral contraceptives and emergency contraception.”"

This article concurs and provides a PDF of the actual proposal.

Setting reproductive rights aside for a moment, this is also part of the discussion on what is a fair accomodation for a person's religious beliefs. There are people who are spinning this as see this as exactly equivalent to providing a vegetarian meal for a Hindu or allowing a Jewish employee to leave their office job in time to reach home by sunset each Friday. I don't, because that the vegetarian meal and even the employee leaving at 3 every Friday between November and March affect other people's lives to a far lesser degree than being counseled by a nurse who refuses to give one information on abortion, having one's prescription for birth control pills destroyed instead of being filled by a pharmacist, or being left to suffer through a miscarriage by a doctor who believes that one got what one deserved for being pregnant out of wedlock. (All incidents from other people's lives, whom I believed when they related them.)

Looks like I didn't manage to set the reproductive rights aside after all, but my point is that, as much as I believe in the freedom of religion and accomodations designed to facilitate that, I think as a society we may need to set a line beyond which religion ought not to be further accomodated and that one possible location of that line is where religiously accomodating one person results in denying life and/or health to another.

Or, perhaps, entangling this issue with religious freedom is really just a smokescreen designed to make it harder to fight an otherwise blatant attack on reproductive freedom. (Redefining contraception as abortion, WTF.) Like the use of forever-delayed 'environmental impact reviews' to block construction of solar energy plants, it strikes me as a conservative use of originally liberal tactics against the side that originated them. So religious freedom is good, they say: then we must be allowed the religious freedom to block access to abortion and contraception, mustn't we?

How the hell do we fight that? ETA: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/ currently redirects to a letter-writing campaign that goes to the White House inbox. With thanks to rosefox

And to think I'd been so cheerful this bright morning.

Comments

WTF indeed.

[greendalek.livejournal.com]

And Congress will make a wonderful show of opposing this, then meet in emergency session to give Bush everything he wants plus an extra box full of signed blank checks.

Re: WTF indeed.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Congress doesn't even get a say in this one. It's Cabinet-level rule-making, and that's an executive function.

Re: WTF indeed.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Well, it can be reversed by legislation. Or reversed by the next administration. I suspect the latter will happen.

Re: WTF indeed.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Well, depending on who's in charge of the next administration ...

Re: WTF indeed.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

Based on my reading of the state-by-state polls, I think Obama has a 2-1 chance of winning.

Re: WTF indeed.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

From your mouth to the electorate's ears.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

This makes me foam at the mouth. I can't even write up a coherent reply to this.

[cereta.livejournal.com]

*nods* The flaw in those analogies is that one assumes the vegetarian meal or leaving early on Friday don't compromise an intrinsic part of the person's job. The better analogy would be hiring a Hindu to wait tables at a steakhouse and having them demand only to serve vegetarian meals, or hiring an observant Jew to work concessions at a high school's Friday night football games, but then have them demand to be allowed to leave before the sun goes down. The key difference here is that, at least as far as I've ever heard, no one has ever actually done that.

[jenny_evergreen]

Thank you, that's exactly what I wanted to say.

[petronelle.livejournal.com]

This, yes. If I hold the deep moral conviction, religious or otherwise, that violence against another human being is wrong, I shouldn't for god's sake become a police officer. No one forced these people into healthcare professions, and it's increasingly probable that they began their jobs after abortion became legal, let alone the pill, so fuck their moral convictions. They can go dig ditches, fight fires, write novels, or any number of other things that will never, ever require them to be responsible for another person's health.

I'm apparently having more trouble than I thought I would in not preaching to the choir on this topic.

[cellio]

Yes yes yes. I was about to post something similar, but now I don't have to.

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

there's much much worse - look into moral refusal laws, EMT's and mississippi:
EMT's are allowed to refuse to transport a patient to an abortion, even if an ER doctor says it's medically necessary to save the life of the woman ... if the woman dies, nothing can happen to the refusing EMT.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/18/135120/742/92/537919

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

My feeling has always been that if your religion compromises your ability to do your job, then you should find a new fucking job, especially if your refusal to do your job has a direct impact on the health and life of another.

I've heard recently of the emergence of pharmacies that don't stock any family planning items, from condoms to BC pills to Plan B, and they don't advertise that they do this. I think if these places are allowed to operate, they should be forced to have giant signs in their windows that read: "FYI: WE DON'T BELIEVE WOMEN ARE REAL HUMAN BEINGS." Then those of us who believe we ARE real human beings could avoid them like the plague.

http://www.truthout.org/article/pro-life-drugstores-market-beliefs
http://www.truthout.org/article/birth-control-denial-height-arrogance

[sistercoyote.livejournal.com]

You might want to check dark_christian, or Dogemperor's posts on daily KOS about the dominionist "parallel economy." Although the information could give you nightmares.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Oh, shit.

I'm at work and I don't have the friggin' time (or spoons or whatever) to do what I would like to about this.

[tibicina.livejournal.com]

I want to say something, but I am afraid that I am not able to be coherent right now. suffice it to say that I agree with you. Also, somewhere in the back of my mind there's someone just screaming and has been since I heard about this.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Among other distressing features of this, it must be hugely frustrating to see faith perverted in this manner.