Mike Pouraryan
The regulation is written to apply to a broad swath of the health care work force, not doctors alone. Accordingly, an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments used in a particular procedure would be covered. Also covered would be volunteers and trainees.
The underlying laws deal mainly with abortion and sterilization, but both the laws and the language of the rule seem to recognize that objections on conscience grounds could involve other types of services.
"This regulation does not limit patient access to health care, but rather protects any individual health care provider or institution from being compelled to participate in, or from being punished for refusal to participate in, a service that, for example, violates their conscience," the rule said.
The underlying laws deal mainly with abortion and sterilization, but both the laws and the language of the rule seem to recognize that objections on conscience grounds could involve other types of services.
"This regulation does not limit patient access to health care, but rather protects any individual health care provider or institution from being compelled to participate in, or from being punished for refusal to participate in, a service that, for example, violates their conscience," the rule said.
The timing of this proposal says so much. With an important election coming up the anti-choice crowd needs to drum up support and give others a reason to hit the voting booths this November. McCain, a well voiced anti-choice advocate, is certain to carry on yet another Bush tradition that this bill would create.
This bill also holds quite a bit of classism involved as it hurts poor women and women in areas with limited care options the most. Another quote:
Leavitt said the regulation was intended to protect practitioners who have moral objections to abortion and sterilization, and would not interfere with patients’ ability to get birth control or any legal medical procedure.
“Nothing in the new regulation in any way changes a patient’s right to any legal procedure,” he said, noting that a patient could go to another provider.
“Nothing in the new regulation in any way changes a patient’s right to any legal procedure,” he said, noting that a patient could go to another provider.
What men like Bush and Leavitt fail to realize is that not all women can just hop down to the next provider down the street. For many women choices are extremely limited due to money, lack of insurance, or physical location. Living in a rural area myself I know what happens when the only pharmacy in town that provides any type of birth control has only 1 pharmacist, one who happens to think all birth control options are against his morals. Imagine a woman the day after a rape having to drive from town to town, hopping pharmacies until trying to find one that she can get Plan B from. All the while with a clicking clock and a diminishing pocketbook (gas ain't cheap you know).
The ACLU has issued a press release condemning this move and Planned Parenthood is asking for donations to help them fight this.
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Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
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What men like Bush and Leavitt fail to realize is that not all women can just hop down to the next provider down the street. For many women choices are extremely limited due to money, lack of insurance, or physical location.
Oh I beg to differ Summer. I think they realise this all too well. And that is the whole entire point.
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
You pro-abortion types say that we pro-lifers are trying to force our will on you, but you are really forcing your will on us. Asking a druggist to provide the means of murdering a child is obscene. Forcing peoplpe who know better to do something completely against everything they believe in is wrong, Ruby. It would be tantamount to forcing you pro-abortion people into going to church.
And, Summer, abortion and contraceptives are NOT the only women's health issues. That may come as a shock to you. How about breast cancer? Cervical, ovarian or uterine cancer? How about heart disease? Those are womens medical issues, too. And treatment for them have improved during the last eight years.
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
No it would not. It would be like forcing a teacher to teach. A swimmer to swim. A pastor to preach. In other words it is part of the job.
If you don't like it, do something else. Leave the medical industry to those who actually care about their patients.
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by smooth political
Comment by Dianna G
I Wish This Was 42
Fictional Worlds
Maybe then it would make sense to leave the people whose morals are against it the fuck alone.
But BIRTH CONTROL?
That's fucking ridiculous.
SL,
Hey you.
Birth control. Is. Not. Murder. And before you make some comment about 'unmarried' or 'too young' or some stupid shit like that, may I remind you that not every married couple wants kids?
Selling birth control SHOULD be mandatory. Don't like it get a new job. Sheesh. We're already overpopulating the planet because people are having too many babies. This isn't gonna help.
(Oh and because too much space/food/water is spent on meat and because it isn't evenly distributed and because neither is birth control and... I'm going to shut up now.)
Bye troll!
~Dianna
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by Jonathan Biviano
Politics Realm
Marriage Bits
Be very, very careful what you wish for, it may work against your own self interests some day.
Let's put it in liberals terms. What if a future president felt it was wrong for a biodiesel reseller to not also offer gasoline? What if that was the only place that sold fuel and the government came in and said, "You, private individual who has a philosophical opposition to gasoline, you must sell it!"
What if they required any store that sold anything edible to sell meat. It's a food some people choose to eat so why should vegan stores stop them from buying it?
What if they told a homeopathic doctor they had to prescribe all medicines by the AMA guidelines?
It's OK to dodge a draft on as a concientious objector but not refuse to sell contraceptives? Do you have brothers, nephews, etc that might be called up if we need a draft again? If you do and you push against private doctors and pharmacists being able to use their conscience, you open the door to not being able to avoid the draft.
Or say they told your poetry shop they had to put Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh books in there too, in order to be "fair."
If the government can force privately owned businesses to sell certain items, they could force all outdoor stores to sell guns. They could ban book stores from selling porn, or force them to sell it.
This is called authoritarian rule and you should be careful what you wish for. If you insist that every PRIVATELY owned business submit their sales list to the government, it can move on to digging in your garbage can to make sure you are recycling (as they already do in Seattle and propose to do in San Francisco). Then if they find things that lead them to get a warrant on your house, now you're invaded. It can lead them to require you own at least one hybrid or electric car, with garage inspections.
Understand, pharmacies are not government agencies. They are not public institutions. Many are mom and pop shops, and it's a basic principle of a free society that they can sell what they want and not sell what they don't want to. Telling people what part of their conscience or faith they are allowed to follow and which ones they can't is VERY VERY DANGEROUS.
This whole thing is not about stopping women from getting contraceptives, it's about our privacy. While it would seem to swing in your favor now to force them to offer these drugs, a future administration or congress might use that same gained power to ban such drugs from pharmacies nationwide.
You will find that the VAST majority of conservatives are not only fine with contraceptives, but use them, including me. Roman Catholicism is the only major religion in the U.S. that has a doctrinal opposition to them. Therefore, the percentage is very small. And, if they are forced to sell things they don't believe in, they could do something even worse: close shop and now offer NO medicines or anything to that rural community. Nothing bans them from that and nothing should.
Pro-life conservative object to ending pregnancies, not preventing them.
And to use your example, if you were just raped, why would you go to a pharmacy? Wouldn't you go to the hospital, an institution that is most likely run by a public health service with no such philosophical issues and access to all the same, if not more, drugs? A rural pharmacy isn't open most hours of the night, should we make them staff it 24x7 to handle rape victims, which they are not and should not be doing?
Comment by Jonathan Biviano
Politics Realm
Marriage Bits
Actually according to many people the world's population is shrinking to the point that
Yes, it's happening primarily in the Western world, but what part of the world provides both the markets and the financial support for the parts of the world where the population is still growing?
One of the reasons that Bush won in 2004 is the shifting of population from liberal states to conservative states. Liberals have fewer kids, through abortion, objection to contributing to "overpopulation," and homosexual relationships. If this population shift hadn't taken place, and the electoral college votes not shifted from places like California to places like the south, Kerry could have won.
So go ahead, liberals. Stop having kids. Please. Don't abort them, just don't have them. Eventually you'll literally all die out and sanity will rule again.
Comment by Jonathan Biviano
Politics Realm
Marriage Bits
Yeah, that's why Cindy McCain is so personally successful or Elizabeth Dole is in Congress herself after running the Red Cross.
Let me say it slowly. Yes. There. Are. Still. Religious. Fanatics. That. Believe. Women. Should. Be. Locked. Up. At. Home., But. Conservatives. Don't. Believe. They. Should. Be. As. A. Matter. Of. Principle.
My wife WANTS to be home with our kids because she has seen the positivie effect it has on their grades, their emotional stability and their faith, but I've never stopped her from working. Neither has ANY conservative U.S. Representative or Senator and many of them have professionally successful wives.
All completely false and misleading statements like yours do is insult women who CHOOSE (hope you like that word when more universally applied) to be home and pregnant. If that's what they want to do, more power to them. President Bush and John McCain have never, ever, not once said
Your statement is as intellectually dishonest as those idiots that call conservative talk shows and say Obama is a Muslim or he won't say the pledge. That needs to stop and so do obvious exaggerations and mistruths like yours.
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
Thought Zone
Is this disease contagious?
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
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Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Comment by RubySoho
Music Zone
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Comment by Dianna G
I Wish This Was 42
Fictional Worlds
Maybe people should *gaspshockdie* ADOPT THOSE CHILDREN IN THE PLACES WHERE THE WORLD IS BEING OVERPOPULATED?
And besides, that only makes sense if we were doing a better job, but the Western world is doing a pretty awful job at helping out the rest of the world.
Hate to break it to you.
Oh, and what's wrong with having fewer kids? It's better than having them and raising them in complete poverty/starvation/abusive homes.
~Dianna