It seems the Bush administration has developed an exit strategy -- unfortunately the target is right here on our home soil. The still-in-office Bush administration is trying to kill two birds with one stone, and those birds are named Health Care and Reproductive Rights.
It is proposing a complicatedly worded (the main clause has a triple negative) rule. It would demand that any organization or institution that receives federal aid from the Department of Health and Human Services will not be eligible for aid unless it signs a written certification saying that it will not refuse to hire providers, doctors or nurses that refuse to provide abortion and even many forms of contraception.
McCain's strongest denunciation of Obama came when discussing the Democrat's health care plan, which would cost $50-65 billion per year but would not mandate insurance coverage for all adults, only children.
"My friends, we've seen this movie before," McCain said. "It was called 'HillaryCare' back in 1993, and we're not going to do it again. We're not going to have the government take over the health care system in America."
The Bush administration is about to release a rule that would allow federal funding specifically designed to prevent unintended pregnancies and promote reproductive health to now be used for anything but that.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has drafted regulations that would re-define contraception as abortion and prioritize "religiously held objections" to providing contraception over women's rights and health.
I didn't sleep very well last night. One of the reasons was that I had gotten the news about the proposed redefinition of contraception to mean abortion. As I'm sure I don't need to tell you, this means that allowing hospitals to refuse to dispense Plan B to rape victims is plausible. "Discriminating" against pharmacists who will not dispense birth control or Plan B will also not be acceptable. As an owner of a pharmacy, say, I couldn't refuse to hire someone who blatantly told me that they didn't believe women should be allowed to take birth control pills. Last night HHS and Bush did nothing less than propose chaos in health care ethics -- the provider has more rights than the patient.
So there I was at 2:30 this morning, trying to get comfortable and fall back asleep. I was not very successful.
Maybe President Bush is smarter than he appears. After all, it takes an aspect of cunning to introduce a proposal that would require federally funded medical institutions to hire health care providers who don't believe in abortion or birth control, and present it as an "anti-discrimination rule." I imagine even Houdini could not achieve such an act of illusion.
Jim Wallis recently proposed changing the Democratic Party platform to emphasize what he calls "abortion reduction." This has been properly understood as not merely finding ways to common ground with conservative evangelicals and Catholics, but to represent an anti-abortion and probably anti-family planning position.
Fortunately, longtime abortion rights proponents, (and actual experts on the subject) Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling, have published at Salon.com a thorough debunking of the abortion reduction agenda of Wallis and his allies. In the big tent of the Democratic Party, we will have many such disagreements. Wallis et al are welcome to assert their views; and when they do, they can expect that they will be answered. Here are some excerpts from this important answering:
Guess what? I am not going to even try and defend Barack Obama against today's Purity Troll on the rec list. Why? Because, frankly, I see it as a anthill sculpted into a real life model of K-2, complete with a frozen sherpa at the top named dhonig.
But if access to safe, legal abortions and the continuance of Roe Versus Wade is the issue you vote on, the hill you are prepared to die on, then know this ...
They love to tell us we live in the GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH... but like VICTORY IN IRAQ they never bother to explain what exactly that phrase means. Greatest.... greatest what? Greatest land mass? Greatest economy? Greatest quality of life? Greatest number of millionaires? Greatest concentration of wealth? Greatest military power? Greatest nuclear power?
I think we all agree life here is generally good. Certainly beats the crap out of Haiti or Yemen or Sudan or Zimbabwe. Hell, we are nowhere near Nigeria in mortality rates (~20%) from botched abortions. Here abortion is still legal and safe. There it is illegal. However, when I was growing up we set the bar a little higher. We talked about the strength of our economy ... although we worried about the national debt. We talked about the strength of our schools ... although we worried about the Russians and the Japanese. We talked about our overall health... and didn't worry about much of anything. Well, Russia has turned into a kleptocracy, Japan is suffering a long-term economic funk (after a real estate bubble like ours) and now we learn, life expectancy is decreasing in America for men and women...
I was walking through the neighborhood today and came across this car. A diehard Bush fan. A hardcore Republican who voted for Ehrlich for governor, and supported Steele's run for the Senate. (I couldn't fit the Steele bumper sticker in the shot, but you see the start of it on the far right.) But that's not why I am sharing this. No....
It's the Obama sticker on the upper left! I blurred the vanity plate because it's the woman's name.
So why the conversion? Why did this hard-working Escort driving Republican decide she is not only going to vote against McCain, she is going to ADVERTISE the fact of her conversion? Simple. "McCain means no choice for women!" I couldn't have said it better myself. I realize this is totally anecdotal, but you know there are many like her flying under the radar and even more ready to convert. They just need to hear McCain speak:
"I cannot see a more counterproductive candidate for women," said Jillian Manus-Salzman, a leading California Republican activist and generous GOP donor in the nation's most populous state, an ATM for presidential campaigns. "I cannot vote for McCain."
Susan Eisenhower - granddaughter of the late GOP president Dwight Eisenhower and a Washington D.C.-based expert on foreign policy and national security issues - said today she is backing Obama over McCain because the Democrat shown more understanding of how the Iraq war, the economy, and other key issues affect their daily lives.
And Harriet Stinson, the 82-year-old founder of Bay Area-based Republicans for Choice, said that - after 60 years of Republican registration - she has finally re-registered as a Democrat.
"I couldn't take it anymore," she said, arguing that on issues like funding birth control and supporting sex education, McCain "couldn't be worse."
In yesterday's post on a case of an ambulance driver's "moral refusal" of taking a woman in severe pain to a women's clinic, a frequent criticism came up: "But wouldn't the EMT get in trouble if she died? Surely they could revoke his license?"
This, sadly, can no longer be assumed. In at least one state--Mississippi--the scenario of an EMT conducting a "moral refusal", the woman dying as a result, and the EMT getting off scot free is an unfortunate possibility.
Even worse, Mississippi's law is now considered a model "moral refusal" statute--as we'll see below.
What does John McCain’s voting record, and what do his public statements, suggest about his views on women and families? It’s a pretty lengthy, damning, and devastating list...
In Part 2 of the miniseries which we began yesterday, we discuss how "moral refusal" clauses are increasingly going far beyond just doctors and pharmacists, and are now extending to the most basic thing we associate with healthcare--the trip in the ambulance to have emergency surgery.
Yes, you're reading this right--dominionist ambulance drivers are now refusing to take people to women's clinics just because the woman needs a medically necessary abortion.
And at the end of the post--because I never like to just bring bad news without discussing ways to fix what's broken--I present some possible solutions to the problem of "moral refusal".
You walk into a pharmacy and pass the pain relievers, deodorants, and shampoos. But when you get to the spot where the condoms normally are shelved, there's nothing. And don't even think about asking to fill a prescription for birth control pills -- you'll get turned away and frowned upon in no time.
Where are you? A "pro-life" pharmacy.
A story in yesterday's Washington Post chronicles the growing movement of "pro-life" pharmacies -- pharmacies that choose not to stock condoms and not to fill prescriptions for the "morning-after" pill, birth control pills and other standard varieties of contraception. The pharmacists and owners of these stores claim that they have the right to not stock products that they find objectionable, and that using standard contraception is tantamount to having an abortion. According to the article,
I was walking through the neighborhood today and came across this car. A diehard Bush fan. A hardcore Republican who voted for Ehrlich for governor, and supported Steele's run for the Senate. (I couldn't fit the Steele bumper sticker in the shot, but you see the start of it on the far right.) But that's not why I am sharing this. No....
