| Bush: Not Done With You Yet – Fascist Restrictions on Abortion, Contraception, Speech
New proposal repackages discrimination as “personal conviction” |
Why is Bush So Interested in Our Vaginas?
By
Cheryl Abraham
In
the latest christo-fascist-taliban-esque move, Bush wants to put his John
Hancock on an Abortion Proposal that would guarantee the religious right of
objection to a medical procedure or prescription of a person working for a
hospital/clinic/pharmacy setting that would supercede the reproductive rights
of a patient, (women), seeking medical care. Incredibly this proposal uses
language that could or would include oral contraceptives and emergency contraception.
What
that means in the real world is that if a woman comes into a clinic or hospital
and needs emergency contraception due to being raped, she might, on top of all
the indignities and life-altering horror she has already suffered, have to face
down a ridiculous confrontation with some fanatically superstitious religious
and ill-informed hospital employee who thinks he or she knows better what the
patient needs because “God” says. It also means that hospitals may limit care to
women due to legal complications. It also could mean that a woman could
never know where she’s going to be able to fill her prescription for oral
contraceptives because her prescription could be denied by the nut behind the
counter.
Robert
Pear, in an article
in the New York Times, writes, “Under the draft of a proposed rule, hospitals,
clinics, researchers and medical schools
would have to sign “written certifications” as a prerequisite to getting money
under any program run by the Department
of Health and Human Services“..The proposal defines abortion as follows:
“any of the various procedures – including the prescription, dispensing and
administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other
action – that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero
between conception and natural birth, whether before or after
implantation.” The article goes on to
state, “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.”
NARAL
Pro-Choice Washington’s website states, “Most alarmingly of all, the proposed
rule would redefine contraception as abortion. This is an intentional
effort by the Bush Administration to confuse contraception, which prevents
pregnancy, and abortion”..Here in Washington, this rule will
undermine our state law (that pro-choice people like you worked so
hard to pass) that requires emergency rooms to offer emergency contraception to
sexual assault victims. And it means that any federally-funded
women’s health clinics in our state may be forced to hire doctors or nurses who
oppose a woman’s right to access abortion care and contraception”..We cannot
let President Bush’s anti-choice ideology trump our heard-earned
pro-choice state laws””
What
I want to know is why the hell does Bush care so much about what goes on in
American women’s vaginas? Why does Bush continue to put his nose where it
doesn’t belong? Bush obviously cares nothing for the precious cargo residing in
the wombs of Iraqi women and continues to allow these mothers and their unborn
to be blown to bits, (much less the already born), and in fact can’t wait to do
the same to the Iranian unborn, so why does he care so much about unwanted
embryos or the un-implanted eggs of American women?
One
explanation is that having government control over women’s bodies appeases the
religious right, who unfortunately have far too much influence over our
supposedly secular government, and it keeps them voting in the republican
direction, and Bush can continue this false façade of being a “good Christian
man” who is spoken to by “God.”
Who
knows what lies in the deep dark recesses of Bush’s brain, all I know is that
he and his religious buddies have no right making medical decisions for women,
or withholding monies from institutions who medically and properly treat women.
Bush also does not have the right to give inordinate power to fanatically
superstitious religious and ill-informed health care employees and allow these
nuts to make medical decisions for women. Yet Bush’s anti -women policies
continue to move forward.
Bush’s
program of denying women the right to birth control and abortion keeps going
and going and going” who says Bush is a lame duck?
Bush: Not Done With You Yet – Fascist Restrictions on Abortion, Contraception, Speech
You might think Bush has done all the
damage he possibly can to reproductive rights. But he’s not done yet.
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.
Under the draft of a proposed rule, hospitals,
clinics, researchers and medical schools would have to sign “written
certifications” as a prerequisite to getting money under any program
run by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The rule defines “abortion”
so broadly that it could also apply to birth control pills and emergency
contraception. And because the rule would apply to federal health programs,
low-income and uninsured women will be most affected.
Sam at Lazy Circles summarizes:
So, the inner city women’s clinic employee
who refuses to talk to patients about birth control? Can’t touch her.
The hospital pharmacist who refuses to fill prescriptions for birth
control? She can’t be fired or disciplined. The doctor who refuses to
give emergency contraception to a rape victim for “religious reasons?”
Give that man a promotion.
He also points out that the Bush administration
is interested in preventing “discrimination” against anti-choice
health care providers, but is a-OK with discrimination against gay people.
Excerpted from the Feministing.com
blog.
rights. This week, the Department of Health and Human Services moved to
make new strides in limiting reproductive options. The proposal
includes three major strikes:
– Strike 1: Some methods of birth control (such as oral contraception
and EC) can be defined as abortion, because they can prevent
implantation after conception. Since some people believe life begins at
conception, these methods can be defined as abortificants.
– Strike 2: Doctors, pharmacists, and other medical professionals are
allowed to refuse to prescribe, fill, or provide legitimate information
about birth control if they’re “morally opposed” to it. Any clinic
receiving federal funding cannot refuse to hire or take disciplinary
action against these individuals.
– Strike 3: Deceptive “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” — centers that pose
as medical clinics but really just dole out false information to
prevent women from making educated decisions — get even more social
service money.
Why stop there? Why not pretend sperm are sentient beings and redefine
condoms as abortificants as well? Then doctors and clinicians wouldn’t
have to deal with handing out all those pesky free condoms if they
didn’t want to. Why not let doctors be “morally opposed” to women
having more children than she appears to be able to support. Let them
sterilize women at will! Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But the truth
is, these new “rules” could open the flood gates for all sorts of new,
outlandish redefinitions of reproductive options, from limiting access
to birth control to creating a new culture of eugenics.
The thing is, this idea of “choice” gets all mangled up in this
conversation. And no I’m not talking about the choice of the patient;
I’m talking about those who swore an oath to do their jobs but think
they can “choose” when to put their medical duties on the backburner.
They say prescribing or even talking about birth control is against
their personal convictions. Well guess what? You’re a doctor, and your
job is to assess situations from a medical standpoint, not a moral one.
If a doctor is obligated to let living patients die because they
requested a DNR order, they should also be obligated to provide a
measly little birth control prescription with legitimate medical
information if requested to do so.
The same goes for pharmacists. Let’s say I was a pharmacist and, for
some bizarre reason, was opposed to the elderly treating their high
blood pressure, and therefore refused to fill Beta blocker
prescriptions for clients over 65 years of age. You, the patient, have
made the decision to take these Beta blockers, but I have made the
decision not to give them to you. Discrimination? No. “Personal
conviction.”
“Fine,” you might say. “That’s your decision; I’ll go to another
pharmacist.” Whoops! I’m the only pharmacist in town, and the
pharmacists in the next town over are all against the use of Beta
blockers by the senior citizens as well. You, my friend, are shit outta
luck.
Why does it sound so crazy when discussing something as trivial as
blood pressure medication but not when considering reproductive
medicine? It’s outright misogyny, another facet of a culture of control
over human lives that the Bush Administration has asserted time and
time again, and it has not slowed in its last few months of existence.
Discrimination is being repackaged as “personal conviction,” and with
this new proposal, there are zero consequences.