Bush Attempts Outgoing Jab to Women's Health

Looks like the Bush Administration is determined to push its right wing agenda until the helicopter takes the country's worst president off the White House Grounds on January 20th, 2008.

Think Progress has issued a lengthy PDF file (download here) of Bush' Backward Sprint to the Finish detailing all the last-minute moves to put odious measures into place before Bush leave office.  One of the more reprehensible is a wide expansion of the "right of conscience" rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.  Despite widespread objections from a wide variety of medical and women's groups, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt signalled yesterday the measure is going forward.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.  It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to "an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments," the draft rule said.

The New York Times reported in mid-November: "As an example of the policies to which they object, Bush administration officials cited a Connecticut law that generally requires hospitals to provide rape victims with timely access to and information about emergency contraception."

Wait a freakin' mother-loving minute here.  THIS is what the new rule is aimed at preventing?   Giving information on the range of options to rape victims? The new regulation would make it okay for a health practitioner to withold information if the health provider has a personal moral objection to certain options (e.g., the morning after pill)?  All I can say is WTF?!!??  But more on my opinion (in italics) in a moment.  Here's what some more politically-correct officials had to say about it:

Gov. M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut, a Republican, said the current state law represented “an earnest compromise” between the rights of rape victims and the interests of health care practitioners who had moral or religious scruples against emergency contraception.  The state attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, said the proposed new regulation “would blow apart solutions and compromises that have been reached by people of good will in Connecticut and elsewhere.”

Under the federal Civil Rights Act, an employer must make reasonable accommodations for an employee’s religious practices, unless the employer can show that doing so would cause “undue hardship on the conduct of its business.”

Okay, I can live with that "reasonable accomodations" business.  And I can understand that doctors with a moral objection to abortion should not be compelled to perform them.  But if abortion is legal and contraception is legal and the morning-after pill is legal, how is it that doctors, pharmacists and other health workers can withold information about these things?

Health and Human Services Department officials said the rule would apply to "any entity" that receives federal funds. It estimated 584,000 entities could be covered, including 4,800 hospitals, 234,000 doctor's offices and 58,000 pharmacies.

Proponents, including the Christian Medical Assn. and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, say the rule is not limited to abortion. It will protect doctors who do not wish to prescribe birth control or to provide artificial insemination, said Dr. David Stevens, president of CMA.

"The real battle line is the morning-after pill," he said. "This prevents the embryo from implanting. This involves moral complicity. Doctors (and pharmacists) should not be required to dispense a medication they have a moral objection to."

Excuse me? A doctor's religious beliefs should trump my choice of a legal product related to my health?

The American Medical Assn. and the American Hospital Assn. in October urged HHS to drop the regulation. The Planned Parenthood Foundation also has condemned the proposed rule.  But despite the controversy, HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said he intends to issue the rule as a final regulation before the Obama administration takes office, to protect the moral conscience of persons in the healthcare industry.

Hey, how about a little less concern about the moral conscience of healthcare workers and a little more about protecting my rights and my health?

If the regulation is issued before Dec. 20, it will be final when the new administration takes office, HHS officials say. Overturning it would require publishing a proposed new rule for public comment and then waiting months to accept comments before drafting a final rule.

The HHS proposal has set off a sharp debate about medical ethics and the duties of healthcare workers.  Last year, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology said a "patient's well-being must be paramount" when a conflict arises over a medical professional's beliefs. "Although respect for conscience is important, conscientious refusals should be limited if they constitute an imposition of religious or moral beliefs on patients [or] negatively affect a patient's health," ACOG's Committee on Ethics said. It also said physicians have a "duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel that they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive services that patients request."

Amen. I second that.

Leavitt said ACOG threatened to brand as "unprofessional" those who do not share its attitudes toward abortion. In August, he criticized "the development of an environment in the healthcare field that is intolerant of individual conscience, certain religious beliefs, ethnic and cultural traditions and moral convictions."

That's B.S., Leavitt.  And frankly, if your beliefs and moral convictions are threatened by these things, perhaps you need to find another line of work.  Unless you became a healthcare professional before 1972, abortion has been a LEGAL fact of U.S. medicine.  You don't approve of the morning-after pill, then don't take it.  Sorry, I just don't see this as a discrimination issue for healthcare workers.

In a media briefing, Leavitt said the rule was focused on abortion, not contraception. But others said its broad language goes beyond abortion.  Since the 1970s, Congress has said no person may be compelled to perform or assist in performing an abortion or sterilization. One law says no person may be required to assist in a "health service program or research activity" that is "contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions." The HHS rule says that law should be enforced "broadly" to cover any "activity related in any way to providing medicine, healthcare or any other service related to health or welfare."

Judith Waxman, a lawyer for the National Women's Law Center, said Leavitt's office has extended the law far beyond what was understood. "This goes way beyond abortion," she said. It could reach disputes over contraception, sperm donations and end-of-life care.

Once again, the conservatives prove they are in favor of less government except in cases that involve my body and my bedroom (and of course, your body and your bedroom).

The traditional media is fixed in its theme that George Bush is being gracious and helpful during this transition of power.  Heaven forbid that any of them (other than Rachel Maddow and Think Progress) would call the lame duck administration out on their last-ditch acts to force wingnut measures on the rest of us.

Comments

[SCB]

uhhh
Gonna be sooo pissed if this measure passes
and messes with my BC

[Vickie Rock]

Because this proposed regulation expands the haziness surrounding "who can object" to any women's reproductive procedure, information or prescription, I fully expect that before all is said and done, the insurance industry will be looking at this regulation as the most wonderful Christmas gift of all time given to them by the Bush Administration before leaving Washington.

Here's how I expect it to play out. Because they object to this type of procedure/prescription, and because insurance monies facilitate the attempted procurement of said procedures/prescriptions, they object to providing information, paying for procedures or paying for prescriptions that facilitate them. They've got plenty of money (from our premiums) and they can use that to fight any challenges in the courts for decades to come.

You thought your health care premiums were high before, well they won't be going down anytime soon, and they'll be covering even less! Worse yet, factor in HMO providers where you're locked into using one 'primary care physician (PCP).' You better take exceptional care in selecting your PCP ... or you may find that not only does that PCP not have to provide information/services/prescriptions if they're of such a conscience ... but they aren't obligated to provide a referral to a doctor who might provide them. It would be perfectly legal to deny service as well as access to service without any consequence. A rape victim could effectively be raped three times: once by the rapist, once by the doctor who denies service or a referal, and once by the insurance company that refuses to facilitate the service by paying for said service.

Something is very wrong in our country when some religious zealot who's in charge of some governmental agency can impose a regulation that adversely impacts more that half the people of this nation ... without any congressional oversight. The constitution may guarantee 'freedom of religion' ... but it also needs to guarantee us some degree of 'freedom from religion' as well.

Read more about what I've written on my Rockspot blog: http://vickierock.blogspot.com/2008/12/leavitts-poised-to-promulgate.html

[doctor excuse]

well this whole excuse thing is really very sick

[doctor excuse]

well this whole story is so so weird.

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Since many women's suffering from any kinds of condition, i hope it will resolve the issue soon,