Bush administration drafting new limits on abortion

In a move that critics say is intended to further tighten restrictions on abortion, the Bush administration is considering a regulation that would allow any healthcare provider to refuse to deliver medical services that violate the worker's moral beliefs, according to a draft of the rule obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The 39-page document has been prepared by the Department of Health and Human Services. It spells out a regulation that could have an effect on pharmacies, clinics, individual doctors' offices, hospitals and other workers and facilities in the broad healthcare network receiving federal money.

It could be put into effect within two months, although that timetable could be extended. The tentative nature of the plan, still considered for internal discussion, was highlighted by these sentences at the bottom of each page: "This is a confidential, deliberative, pre-decisional document and does not necessarily reflect current policy efforts or plans. For official use only."

The rule would be intended, the document says, to make sure that federal funds "do not support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or polices in violation of federal law."

Summarizing what she presented as the apparent intent of the regulation, Jill Morrison, the senior counsel of the National Women's Law Center, said in a telephone interview that the broad sweep of the measure, from the language of its introduction, "is essentially a hit list against anything that protects a patient's rights to get access to legal and needed health services" in the area of reproduction.

After studying the document, the advocacy group -- seeking to draw attention to the proposal to try to head it off -- said that if put into effect by administrative order, it would restrict a woman's access to reproductive health services and information, including birth control, and allow patients to be denied information "about medically appropriate and necessary services."

Under the rule, clinics, hospitals and other providers of healthcare would be required to certify that they would not fire a worker who has religious objections to providing any particular "health service." These could include multiple forms of contraception, including some birth control pills, IUDs and emergency "morning after" contraception.

Current federal employment law prohibits firing workers because they refused to perform a task that goes against moral or religious beliefs -- protections that have been spelled out in various degrees since the 1970s and now allow health workers to not take part in providing abortions in some circumstances.

But federal law also protects patients' rights to obtain those services and gives employers the right to respect the worker's beliefs -- only to the point that doing so does not impose "undue hardship" on the employer, Morrison said.

She said the purpose of the proposed rule appeared to be to blur the line between abortion and contraception as the Bush administration leaves office -- in effect broadening the definition of abortion and restricting access to procedures fitting the new definition.

"Everywhere in federal law contraception is contraception and abortion is abortion," she said. "What this does is take the extra step of trying to conflate the two. It's an attack on a woman's right to contraception."

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[J.C. Royals]

I commend those with strong personal ideas and beliefs, but I do not believe that these thoughts and beliefs should be involved in my personal care unless I choose them to be or have sought out the care of those with like beliefs for this purpose. That being said while I would love for everyone to reserve their right to practice medicine in a manner that best fits with their being, maybe you shouldn't be involved in a public practice if such issues bother you so. Maybe better suited would be a practice with like minds. My right to such protections has been fought under Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton and is no ones business but my own. I support and respect the right to choose and practice in all aspects of life, no matter how controversial, so I ask for others to respect me.

[tz_michigan]

The rule would be intended, the document says, to make sure that federal funds "do not support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or polices in violation of federal law." Of course, it does mean that federal funds can be used to support a religious ideology. Don't you wonder what might have been if Bush had needed the Santeria vote. The White House staff would be pushing sacrificial slaughter of goats in the Rose Garden.

Wow, I really want to hang myself now. Worst president ever.

Can women not just choose a physician or other health care provider who does share their beliefs? We all have a choice about who we go to for care....looks more to me like a specific worker could choose not to do a procedure, not that it is a restriction on care. Odds are pretty good that someone who doesn't believe in abortion is not going to go to work for an abortion clinic.....

[Sean Murphy]

To see the draft regulation, go to http://www.consciencelaws.org/Proposed-Conscience-Laws/USA/PLUSA16b.html

[Martha - GFT]

If a pharmacist, knowing a man is having an affair on his wife or maybe having sex out of marriage, decides not to fill his prescription for Viagra because adultery goes against his or her religious beliefs, is that covered?