A Grave Infringement on the Right to Choose, and Ridiculous Meddling into the Practice of Medicine

[babylonsister]

http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx082208.html

A Grave Infringement on the Right to Choose, and Ridiculous Meddling into the Practice of Medicine
By Matthew Rothschild, August 22, 2008


The new Bush reg on abortion just came out, and it’s astonishingly sweeping.

The regulation would give the President the power to yank funding from “more than 584,000 hospitals, clinics, health plans, and doctors’ offices . . . if they do not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care they find objectionable on personal, moral, or religious grounds,” the Washington Post reports.

So say a young woman has been raped and she comes in either for emergency contraception, or eight or twelve weeks later an abortion.

Any health care employee can refuse to help that woman, and can even refuse to offer her a referral. If the hospital or clinic tried to fire that employee for not assisting a patient in need, they’d lose federal funding.

This is a ridiculous infringement of a woman’s right to choose, and it’s ridiculous meddling into the practice of medicine.

How are you supposed to run a hospital when any employee can refuse to participate in medical procedures?

One person may be opposed to tubal ligations, another to vasectomies, a third to circumcisions, and yet another to infant inoculations.

What are you to do? Have two sets of employees—one team that’ll do everything and another that picks and chooses?

How ’bout something simpler?

Like the idea that if you’re in the health care business, your job is to give the patient get the best and safest treatment possible, as defined by prevailing medical standards.

Not as you, or George Bush, define it.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Get those crazed fanatics out of Washington!!! ASAP!!!!

[depakid]

2. Just part and parcel to the war on science in general- and the war on birth control

in particular.

Nothing really new here- their intention all along has been to over rule Griswold AND to federally preempt state laws on reproductive rights.

[Triana]

6. It's part of the neverending war on WOMEN n/t

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. Two words: Jeovah's Witnesses. -nt

[Richard Steele]

4. GRRRecommended. nm

[crimsonblue]

5. doctors have no right forcing their own morals on patients

I say this as a son of a doctor. I've talked to my dad about this, and he has reiterated that the most important ethic to follow is 'first, do no harm'. My dad has interpreted this as following the wishes of the patient as long it did no harm to the patient or the doctor's license. My dad has referred women to Dr Tiller, and he has prescribed day after pills to friends of my sister that call hysterically. He does not personally agree with abortion, but he feels it must remain legal so that it can remain safe. How many hundreds of women have died throughout history because they got dangerous abortions by untrained people?

[northofdenali]

7. Sounds like your dad is a REAL doctor.

Now, if only the Right Wing "Christians" were forced to obey the Hippocratic oath, "First Do No Harm". Nah. That'd cook 'em.

[K8-EEE]

8. McCain would like to Saudi-ize American women re: reproductive rights

Seriously! They have these freaking fundies who will not fill a birth control pill prescription because they think it might "murder" some 2-hour half-way fertilized something or other down the road.

WAKE UP WOMEN IN THE US -- THE DARK SIDE WANTS TO PUT A BURKA OVER ALL YOUR CONTRACEPTIVE CHOICES, NOT JUST ABORTION - AND THEY WOULD MAKE THE MORNING AFTER PILL "MURDER!"

[nashville_brook]

9. don't like reproductive rights? don't go into women's healthcare. it's that simple.