When I went to college, there was a clinic in town with a sliding fee scale where you could obtain contraceptives. Even though by that time abortion was legal, even in provincial, conservative Bethlehen, Pennsylvania -- college students had access at low cost to a physician who would prescribe birth control pills, insert an IUD, or offer up a diaphragm and jelly or condoms with spermicidal foam for those students who wanted to be responsible about their active sexuality.
Today, the right to terminate an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy is hanging by a thread, but the hand-wringing about at what point a woman ceases to be a human being and simply becomes a vessel for a parasitic developing being that has more rights than she does isn't stopping at the angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin question. Emboldened by the relentless march towards a legal definition of abortion as murder, those who don't believe women should be permitted to prevent unwanted pregnancy (that is, have sex without the "punishment" of the mark of her sin), have been able to take steps towards "conscience exceptions" in medical fields. Pharmacists are now permitted to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives they believe (erroneously) to be "abortifacients". Doctors are permitted to refuse to prescribe them.
If your child has a raging fever and runaway systemic infection, should a Christian Scientist doctor be allowed to refuse to prescribe antibiotics? Then how is this any different?
If for no other reason than the kind of medieval thinking about women's right to control their own bodies BEFORE having to deal with unwanted pregnancy, John McCain must NOT be elected this November. Because if he is, he WILL perpetuate this:
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.
Such certification would also be required of state and local governments, forbidden to discriminate, in areas like grant-making, against hospitals and other institutions that have policies against providing abortion.
The proposal, which circulated in the department on Monday, says the new requirement is needed to ensure that federal money does not “support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.” The administration said Congress had passed a number of laws to ensure that doctors, hospitals and health plans would not be forced to perform abortions.
In the proposal, obtained by The New York Times, the administration says it could cut off federal aid to individuals or entities that discriminate against people who object to abortion on the basis of “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
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.”
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.”
“We worry that under the proposal, contraceptive services would become less available to low-income and uninsured women,” Ms. Gallagher said.
In other words, a family planning clinic receiving federal funds would not be allowed to require that a nurse or other employee distribute family planning supplies.
The article's headline specifies "abortion", but the proposal also includes "conscience clauses" for contraception as well.
Given that so-called conservatives want to gut programs that help low-income families, you'd think that they'd want to provide assistance for low-income women to be able to avoid having children they can't afford. Or are they saying that just as housing, health care, and all the other things the middle class has taken for granted for the last two generations are now the exclusive province of the wealthy, now family planning is too?
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