Under a new regulation poised to become law any day now, any health-care worker may refuse to perform procedures, offer advice or dispense prescriptions - like the morning after pills pictured here [at the link] - if doing so would offend their 'religious beliefs or moral convictions'.Here's the body of the text:
What does it tell us about the state of the abortion wars, that battles once waged over the dignity and autonomy of pregnant women have morphed into disputes over the dignity and autonomy of their health-care providers? Two of the most pitched battles over reproductive rights in America today turn on whether health workers can be forced to provide medical services or information to which they ethically object. But as we learn from these fights, our solicitude for the beliefs of medical workers is selective: abortion opponents will soon enjoy broader legal protections than ever. Those willing to provide abortions, on the other hand, will enjoy far fewer. And women seeking reproductive services will be more caught up than ever in the tangle between the two.Read the whole article, which concludes like this:
Whether we like it or not, the right to birth control, emergency contraception and—under most circumstances—abortion is still constitutionally protected. But these are not services a woman can provide for herself, which leaves her with few rights at all when her doctors are empowered by law to misinform her, withhold advice or deny services altogether. Even beyond the problem of subordinating a woman's rights to her doctor, however, there looms a larger question for health-care workers themselves: if they are indeed seeing their rights and freedoms either hugely expanded or severely restricted based solely on which side they've chosen in the culture wars, they might properly wonder whether any of them are truly free at all.That's not the best way to spin things, as coequal claims on rights. The unborn can make no such claims. God's will works through pro-life conscientious objectors, bless them.
At issue, in any case, are new proposals at the federal and state level that are empowering providers of abortions to exercise their right of conscience to decline to provide services.
I especially like South Dakota's requirement that service providers read to the patient that she is about to:
... "terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being" with whom she has an "existing relationship " ...Right on, and more power to the South Dakota legislature.
There are lots of rights involved here. The right of freedom of conscience, as well as freedom of choice. Unfortunatley the unborn baby's right to life doesn't normally get a vote, much less a voice.
11 comments:
Yes yes. Grace, me me me! I will murder these people for you!
I just can't stand that they are doing what their patient is asking them to do.
Tell you what, I'll kill the mothers who requested the abortion too! collateral damage?
Oh what the hell, it's GOD'S WILL and the ends justify the means.
And I won't stop there. The USA isn't obeying GOD's HIGHER LAW and must be punished. These hideous people who live, love and make mistakes. I'll fly a plane into a building for my God and his law.
Oh I'm against Christians engaging in violence too, but it's GOD'S LAW!
Oh you asked Him to do it personally? Well.. He's busy killing people by the million via disease and natural disaster. He hasn't got time for this petty crap. Somebody needs to pick up the slack.
Hey... do you have their addresses?
there is a right to life, but not always a right not to be killed. the taking of a person's life is not always murder. self defense is one example. as in the case of abortions concerning the health, safety, or life of the mother.
Nothing more pathetic than some who posts "Anon" because the don't have the guts or nuts to back up their perverted Atheist claims.
Grace, you are right on target, but you'll never convince the sorry souless trolls like "Anon" and his/her ilk.
With thinking, or lack thereof, like Anon's Just maybe he/she will want to be aborted to help the cause of global warming and lessen the amount of people on this planet. He/she could volunteer to make the planet a better place.
Yeah you're a really brave and soulful guy, Hoot.
That's why you have blog posts titled "castrate a fag", right?
Pure class. The love of Jesus just shines through you, man.
Dennis, do you honestly feel that abortion clinic workers should be murdered, completely separate to whether a woman has no rights over her body, that fruitcake religious delusion has a higher moral authority than US law?
That's all cool with you? With everyone who reads this?
I have to share a personal experience. I lost many pregnancies between my two girls - one in which an ultrasound showed the baby very under-developed and with an extremely slow heartbeat. That baby was on the verge of death, and as I was going to a Catholic hospital, they sent me home until the poor thing died and I started hemorrhaging profusely. I was quite upset that - when I asked them to terminate the pregnancy - they refused, being a Catholic hospital. I went through a lot of emotional hell during that day and a half before that baby died. I am still upset about that, but it shows me that there are many places where doctors can practice their conscience. I certainly picked a Catholic hospital and could have chosen a different hospital for a different result. I am not sure why this is an issue as I don't see doctors being forced to perfom abortions if they don't want to. On the side of the potential new law, I have seen stories of pharmacists being forced to dispense abortion drugs.
I believe that doctors anywhere in the United States of America can choose to not practice abortion.
For the record, I am not pro-abortion. In my case, I didn't think of it as an abortion for some reason - probably because I knew that the baby was dying. Perhaps, being a Christian, I should have thought that the possibility of some sort of miracle is always there, or even that the equipment at the hospital was defective and not showing properly the condition of my baby...? Right or wrong, that is not how I was thinking - I knew my baby was almost dead.
Courageous of you to share that, Grizzly Mama.
I Say what I think Anon, and my blog tells you where I live, more than I can say for you, you gutless, souless troll.
Grace, you scare me a bit. (It's ok, I have friends who talk like that. It still scares me though.)
What gets me is this -- call it moral relativism, I don't care -- the same people who get all choked up about an embryo or a zygote getting terminated shed not a tear --not a single tear-- for that baby, that entire family, that gets blown away by cluster bombs in Iraq, the innocent women that get raped and then shredded by the sword of a janjaweed, or the countless that simply die of mass starvation (currently, about 1 billion people on this planet are starving).
And you worry that some poor woman wants to be in control of her life, and take responsibility.
It truly makes me sick. I see this from the all the time from the right, I don't hear it though. It's false equivocation, and it rings so hollow it's not even funny.
The religious right--as hypocritical as it comes. Sorry.
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