Bush administration unveils new abortion regulation

The Bush administration proposed new rules today that critics say would make it more difficult for women to obtain abortions, and for men and women to obtain contraceptives.

After more than a month of internal -- and eventually public -- debate, the administration unveiled regulations that, if enacted, would provide stronger protections for doctors and other healthcare providers to refuse to perform medical procedures -- or, possibly, sell contraceptives -- if such steps violate their religious beliefs.

Jill Morrison, the senior counsel of the National Women's Law Center, told Countdown to Crawford when we reported on the draft regulation in July that it was "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.

Publication of the rule in the Federal Register triggered a 30-day public comment period, after which the Bush administration could implement a final rule.

Announcing the proposed regulation today, Mike Leavitt, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said it was "about the legal right of a healthcare professional to practice according to their conscience."

He said:

Doctors and other healthcare providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience. Freedom of expression and action should not be surrendered upon the issuance of a health care degree.

The department said the rule would make it clear that protections against discrimination "apply to institutional healthcare providers as well as to individual employees" whose offices receive certain federal funds.

The department argued that the regulation "would in no way restrict healthcare providers from performing any legal service or procedure" and that patients would be able to obtain the procedure -- an abortion, for example -- from someone who did not assert "a conflict of conscience."

The proposal is certain to face challenge from abortion rights supporters.

Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said: “Women’s ability to manage their own healthcare is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology."

She said, the Associated Press reported, that the organization was concerned that the regulation posed "a serious threat to women’s healthcare by limiting the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate health information and services."

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo of Mike Leavitt in 2006: Kevin Wolf / Associated Press

Comments

[Outraged Woman]

This is outrageous and ridiculous.

This violates our civil liberties to choose (For Men too!). If Doctors don't want to prescribe birth control, they don't have to. But they will lose a lot of business.

If they are going to do this to BC, they should include Viagra and Cialis as well.

[Manuel Colunga-Hernandez]

I just read yesterday that doctors in California could not DENY insemination to Lesbian couples based on the Dr's objections on religious grounds... THIS will nullify that state ruling, you realize! Because it will be a FEDERAL mandate... this has gone from bad to absolutely medieval... This man and his administration have to be taught a lesson on civics, by the people. IMPEACHMENT is too good... they have to be brought to trial for crimes against humanity!

[Alice Jones]

Why can't they just go away already?

[Paul]

As a Scientologist, all prescription medications are against my religious beliefs. That is why a pharmacy would be the perfect place of employment for me. I could sit around all day doing absolutely nothing.

I need to interest all my Scientology buddies in carreers in pharmacology--perhaps we could effectively undermine the entire industry--especially if our positions were protected.

[Paul]

Americans voted for the Imbushile. Twice. His actions are God's judgement for our stupidity.

[NPAFL]

...should not be forced to choose ...Freedom of expression and action should not be surrendered... Amazing how this anti-choice bill (for patients) is using the pro-choice arguments.
Look, if you want to give the doctors / staff choice let them choose to not work there, or choose to open their own clinic where they can do what they choose to not do. Pacifists don’t join the army. Should I choose not to pay taxes if I morally object to war?

[cdemackio]

How many doctors would actually have this conflict of interests I wonder? And wouldn't it open the doctors up to lawsuits? Let's say that a woman needed an abortion immediately to save her life. The doctors say no because it's against their religious beliefs. The woman dies and her family hires an investigator to look into the doctors' personal lives. If they found the doctors did anything that would be considered volunteerily sinning (a divorce, an affair, being overweight, sex before marriage, pride even) wouldn't they be able to sue the doctor? Would doctors start calling priests into the surgery to confer with them before performing these operations?
I think Bush is just doing this to create an issue that would point out differences between McCain and Obama. He has to know that this kind of legislation is doomed and has almost no chance.

[Ted]

The way I view this proposal, is that iti is protecting a doctors right to choose what to do in his or her practice. Just like some woman choose to kill their baby. Why are some of the people from these comments so pro-abortion that they are going against the same idea of choice when it applies to doctors. It seems a little suspicious....Plus, abortion is killing a human, no question about it (its not above my paygrade) why is it legal anyway? The worst argument ever is "well the fetus is not viable on its own so it should be the woman's choice" well a 2 year old is still not viable alone either the kid needs parents or some one who takes care of the little guy or girl or they are not going to be able to survive of their instincts.

[Amanda]

Actually - its questionable if he was voted in either time.

Anyway, this is just mental. How can this be in modern day politics? Maybe its time the bible was updated for modern times so that people who live their life by it wholeheartedly without thinking at all about the times it was written, and the reasons it was written are history. I mean in what other situation do people rely on teachings of something 2000 years old? Ahh! Sometimes it hurts my head living in America. I agree - impeachment is too good. But it would be a start. He has violated the rights of Americans, not to mention Iraqis, enough.

[BruceR]

Well here he goes again. Pandering to the far right lunatic fringe flying monkey freak show. And everyone gets all lathered.

States license doctors, not the prime idiot himself. States license pharmacists, and nurses, and everyone. If a state stipulates that as a matter of license you must follow the rules of professional responsibility rather than some book you found in your hotel room, then that's it. You wanna practice medicine in my state, you follow my state's rules or move to Arkansas and date your sister. The bible says that's OK (although I don't believe Arkansas exists because it's not in the bible...).

Say I work at a fence company. I don't believe in caging animals. If I get sent to work on a cage at the zoo, and refuse to make the latch latch and a lion eats someone, that's OK with the nutter in the White House? Hey, my conscience! I work for an exterminator but don't believe in killing animals. Pretty cush job, eh?

I'm a navigator on a plane, but I know the world is flat. I crash a lot of planes, but that's fine, my beliefs are protected.

I sold my daughter into the sex slave industry. The bible says that's OK, so I can't be prosecuted. The bible says everything Mr. Jeffs did in Texas was proper, so leave him alone.

I follow Shiria, so when I lob off a few heads because they were not properly covered, so be it. Can't touch me. It's my personal belief.

I am an athiest. I got a job as a priest. I've been doing baptisms with pig pee rather than holy water, so thousands of babies are going to hell. Too bad, but I didn't have to tell anyone because it's my belief system. And because I'm pretending I'm a priest, I get to diddle little boys as much as I want, because I believe it's fun.

There are two sides to this crazy knife, mr. chimp-in-charge. Anyway, you might think you're the decider, but the Constitution doesn't give you that. The Constitution proscribes you execute law, not make it, you idiot.

What this bunch of kooks is trying to do, and have been trying to do since they crawled out of whatever creepy club they started in college, is overturn the concept of rule of law.

They just hate laws, and having to follow them. That's why they've got their crazy biblical law schools, from which they draw their legal teams. The Bar Association ought to put an end to that right away.

And The People ought to put an end to this bunch of lunatics right away. Hey, congress, grow a few 'nads, pass a law saying we don't believe in anything that comes out of the white house so they can't have any more money. That'll shut them up for the next few months. Money. That's all they really believe in anyway.

BruceR

[bryan murray]

It's slippery slope time. Based on his personal religious grounding in some obscure mountain Baptist sect, may a medical doctor refuse to set the broken leg of "cultist " Mormon missionary? May a Muslim doctor plain refuse to treat some mountain evangelical's snake bite? May a Jewish doctor refuse to touch an "unclean" Muslim child? All this just in time to radiicalize the already humiliated and morally cornered confederates existing in the Lower Right corner of this country.

Every right thinking Christian knows "our" unborn children need to be saved up for when we need troop strength -- to die at the right time - in another war for Holy Oil.

Observe the picture accompanying this story. Another middle aged white man in his priestly vestments wielding a leather bound piece of wood pulp and ink. He is obviously in contact with a higher power.

[bryan murray]

What radicalized TV Lawyer/Christian cabal came up with this one? I hope he performed the correct animal sacrifices concerning the long lobe of the liver before coming up with this, because it makes no earthly logic.

[beakmur]

What this will lead to:

"Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior?"

"No Doctor."

"Then take your severed leg and go find an atheist physician."

[Beverly B. Nuckols, MD]

The regulation protects the right of the doctor, nurse or pharmacist who does not want to go against his or her conscience. We must strengthen, not weaken, good character in the people who care for our weakest and most vulnerable.

Otherwise, we would have medical professionals who follow the law rather than practice good medicine for their patients. If they will bend to the will of government, they will certainly bend to the will of insurance companies, public pressure and money.

Beverly B. Nuckols, MD, MA (Bioethics)
New Braunfels, Texas

[Jennifer Rondeau]

The LATimes does a marginally better job than Salon.com in reporting the proposed rule, but there's still a lot of missing information here. What's most frightening isn't what's in the proposed rule, but what isn't in it.

There is nothing new in the rule about anti-discrimination provisions per se. These have been around since the Church/Conscience Amendments of the 1970s, and more emphatically since the infamous Weldon Amendment of 2007. There are other recent statutes that also protect the rights of health care providers with regard specifically to reproductive care.

So most of what folks are objecting to (or supporting) in these letters has in fact been law for quite a while.

What is new, and frightening in the current political climate, is the omission of any definition of the term "abortion." Especially because this omission follows hard on a definition so broad that it had to be rescinded (in an earlier version of the rule), this can only be seen as the not-so-very thin end of a wedge to open wide the possibility of denying any sort of reproductive control to women.

In other words, if the rule is adopted -- and it seems likely that it will -- health care providers can refuse to provide a service, or refer for a service, that they define for themselves as abortion. Which means, of course, that they are free to refuse to discuss any of the birth control methods defined as abortion in the abandoned version of the rule.

So far so good, you might say. In a free market economy, this is still ok, because practitioners can choose, and patients can choose.

But the proposed rule does not stop there. We are also talking about *federal funding* and non-discrimination. The term "entity" (meaning any entity that receives federal funds) is also not defined. Previous rules and legislation defined it more precisely. This lack of definition means that any clinic that provides reproductive services of any kind, and receives federal funds, will not be able to screen potential employees regarding their willingness to refer patients to a full range of services. Such clinics would not even be able to ask the question "how do you define abortion?" or "what kinds of birth control are you prepared to explain to patients?" because these questions would be seen as potentially discriminatory.

Do abortion foes on this list really want to see women who want to prevent pregnancy effectively limited in their options? Because that is where the rule is headed. Many many women rely on federally funded clinics for reproductive services. If those clinics are limited in even the information that they can provide, such women do not have the easy option to turn elsewhere.

[Andrew]

"The Fall of Medicine
Some may be familiar with the new proposition from President Bush regarding doctors being allowed to refuse treatment based on religious or moral beliefs. This law would protect doctors from being fired if they refuse treatment for those reasons. Bush's intention is obviously for the doctors to be able to refuse treatment associated with abortions (and this is already terrible enough)...."

nationalinternational.blogspot.com

[Sean Larabee]

I think the thing I find most disturbing about these regulations (to me) is the idea that a physician may not have to prescribe a medication based on his (or her) religious beliefs. As much as there SHOULD be a separation of church and state there IS a separation of church and science and medicine is a science.

Any physician that would refuse to prescribe any medication based on a personal religious objection should have his license revoked and seek a different line of work, like perhaps a lawyer or politician. There is no place for religion in scientific study, research, or application.

[HeatherH]

Bush's new proposed abortion regulation is seriously flawed. It is flawed due to the fact that Medical Doctors and healthcare providers take an oath to provide the best care to their patients as humanly possible. Additionally, this new proposal would be in direct violation of the process of "informed consent". Doctors and health care providers are required by law to inform their patients of all available options for their particular aliment. Medical Doctors and healthcare providers are supposed to deliver the best standard of care possible. If Doctors and/or healthcare providers have an ethical issue or a "conscience" issue, regarding what is required of them at there place of employment then they should not be working there, because they cannot provide the best care to their patients.

Clearly, this new proposal is ridiculous. Healthcare professionals PROVIDE a service to others, they are bound by law, and should be bound by their “conscience” to provide the best service possible, and if they do not inform their patients of all options or alternatives for treatment then they are not performing their duties to the best of their ability. This would be an injustice. This "new proposal" would allow this to happen.

[Made Irritable by Bush]

There are some religions that consider the cow to be a sacred animal, that is why people of these religions don't work on cattle farms. It seems more like a matter of common sense than a matter of rights.

Things like this make me want to start my own religion where a company can't refuse me a job with good pay even though my religion is opposed to working hard.

[Alan]

Amazing how quickly freedom goes out the door when its for other people who might not want to be your slaves.