Future Choices editorial: Sarah Palin and the Republican plot against family planning
The Republican nominee for Vice President, Sarah Palin, waxed hyperbolic on a number of occasions during her September 3 speech to the party faithful in St. Paul, MN, but in one area she did not exaggerate: her vehement and unconditional opposition to contraception. This position – and the horrifying possibility that the Republican ticket might prevail in November – makes the current administration’s plot to bar non-wealthy American women from getting contraceptive care all the more dangerous.
Most Americans are unaware that such an attack on family planning is under way. In part because the Administration’s strategy is so convoluted that it defies the imagination, it has received very limited exposure in the press. Simply stated the new regulations, poised for release by the Bush Administration within weeks (while the media is distracted by the Presidential campaign), would be an unprecedented federal rule that would allow health care providers to deny women contraception.
The rules regulating the provision of federally subsidized family planning care as proposed by Health and Human Service Secretary Michael Leavitt would make safe, legal and essential reproductive health care unaffordable to millions of low-income, uninsured and under-insured women. The effects of these regulations are numerous as they expand the power of ideologues to refuse to provide even basic information, counseling and referrals for important health care services.
While leaving the door open to permit abortion to be defined so as to include most widely used modern contraceptive methods, these regulations would require all health care providers treating patients with the help of federal funds to certify that they discriminate in no way against any employee, student intern or volunteer who find abortion morally objectionable. This includes public and private clinics, hospitals, pharmacies, even doctors treating Medicaid patients in private practice.
The impact of this new policy, for which no Congressional approval is needed, is stunning. A few examples provide insight.
- Rape survivors seeking medical care could be refused emergency contraception or any information about its availability.
- Pharmacists could refuse to fill legitimate prescriptions for contraceptives and could refuse to refer patient elsewhere.
- Young women seeking contraceptive care at a federally subsidized health care facility could be refused an appointment by a receptionist who is personally opposed to family planning. The facility, remember, is obligated by these regulations to hire and retain such an employee.
All this would come to pass even here in New York, where patients’ rights to basic health care are broadly protected, because federal rules trump state law.
These new rules are preposterously out of sync with the views of the American public, more than 90 percent of whom use contraceptives at some point in their lives, and more than 89 percent of whom, regardless of political ideology or religious affiliation, strongly support federal funding to allow low-income and uninsured women and men to access contraceptive services that they would otherwise be unable to afford. Given that at least 17.5 million women in America are in need of publicly-funded contraceptive services, a number that continues to rise as more and more people become uninsured and unemployed as the economy struggles, common sense would dictate that the federal government should be working to increase access to these crucial health care services, rather than working to limit them.
Yet, sadly this is not the case. Furthermore, judging from what she has said in the past to the people of Alaska and more recently to the world, Mrs. Palin would be pleased to see these measures in place in January. If elected, she would surely assert her considerable will to see such punitive regulations are strictly enforced.
I assert that this alone is reason enough for every voter who cares about America and Americans to ensure that she never has this opportunity. To keep our families safe from Mrs. Palin’s extremist tyranny we need to select the Obama/Biden team in November who will restore the right to reproductive health care to all Americans regardless of their economic status.
This page last updated September 7, 2008 18:53 .