Opinion pieces decry the potential for harm which would result from the imposition of the so-called "conscience clause."


Proposed HHS Conscience Rule Ignores Patients' Rights, Opinion Piece Says

Dec. 9, 2008
Wichita Eagle

Although most U.S. presidents enact "midnight" regulations as they leave office, President Bush is "operating at the far edge of reasonableness" by pushing through administrative orders such as the proposed HHS conscience rule, which would "take a sledgehammer to 40 years of carefully constructed court decisions that balance the rights of health workers against the rights of patients," Wichita Eagle columnist Davis Merritt writes in an opinion piece. |MORE

Proposed rule lets conscience guide health care

Florida Times-Union
December 3, 2008

Some say it would violate patients' rights and quality of care. Others say it would protect the moral integrity of health-care professionals.

Either way, the 11th-hour Bush administration "right of conscience" proposal is stirring up controversy...
The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association in October urged Health and Human Services to drop the regulation. The Planned Parenthood Foundation and other backers of abortion rights condemned the rule as a last-gasp effort by the Bush administration to please social conservatives. |MORE

MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show"
December 2, 2008

The Rachel Maddow Show on December 2nd included a discussion with Melissa Harris-Lacewell -- an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton University -- about the proposed conscience rule. Harris-Lacewell said the rule represents a new strategy for limiting women's reproductive rights. |MORE

"Provider Conscience Clause Sees Increased Opposition"

Planned Parenthood Advocate Blog
12/2/08

The blog entry examines increasing opposition to a proposed HHS conscience rule that would allow health care providers who receive federal grants to opt out of care based on their moral or religious beliefs. According to the blog, HHS could release the final version of the rule "[a]ny day now." Opposition to the proposal includes legislation introduced by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) that would block implementation of the rule. [See further] Numerous medical associations and political figures also oppose the rule, and President-elect Barack Obama has said that he would attempt to overturn it once in office. According to the blog entry, "Nobody needs another obstacle to getting health care these days, and nobody should have to fear an argument with their doctor or pharmacist over the morals of protecting yourself from pregnancy or simply accessing health care." It continues, "We pay medical professionals to help us attain the health care that we choose for ourselves, not to make those choices for us". |MORE

Baltimore Sun Examines Potential Impact of Proposed HHS Conscience Rule

[November 30, 2008]

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new "right of conscience" rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health care workers to refuse to participate in any way in morally "objectionable procedures" such as abortion and possibly including birth control and artificial insemination.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that health care workers may also refuse to provide information or advice about abortion to patients...

Critics of the rule say it will sacrifice patients' health to the religious beliefs of providers.

Despite the controversy over the rule, HHS Secretary Michael O. Leavitt said he intends to issue it as a final regulation before the Obama administration takes over.

If the regulation is issued before Dec. 20, it will be final when the Obama administration takes office, HHS officials say. The new administration would then have to begin new rule-making procedures to overturn it. |MORE

An unconscionable rule
Bush’s punitive ‘conscience clause’ is unnecessary

Eugene Register-Guard
November 24, 2008

Widely seen as having earned a shot at being judged the worst president in U.S. history, George W. Bush has never paid much attention to public opinion. Or legal opinion. Or expert opinion. Or scientific opinion.

So it comes as no surprise that he is plowing full speed ahead with an eleventh-hour scheme to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds. Why should he give a rip about the tsunami of objections? |MORE

Contraceptive Fudge


August 28, 2008
Slate
by William Saletan

HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt has issued a final version of his proposed regulation to protect medical conscience (PDF). As predicted, he has dropped the sentence that originally defined abortion as "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."

Leavitt has also chosen to leave open the possibility that the regulation will be applied that way. In that case, it would protect a provider's right to withhold oral contraception, which theoretically could prevent implantation of an embryo. |MORE

The Hastings Center has weighed in strongly that the so-called 'conscience clause' in the proposed regulations is devious at best. |See further Nancy Berlinger's 8/26/08 column in Bioethics Forum

An affront to women and families
A last-ditch effort to redefine birth control as abortion isn't a matter of conscience; it's just unconscionable

Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Oregonian

Michael Leavitt feels misunderstood, or so he hints on his blog. The Bush-appointed secretary of health and human services isn't sure how some people, somehow, got the crazy idea that the government intends to redefine birth control as a form of abortion.

Perhaps the 37 million American women who use contraception -- including more than 400,000 women in Oregon -- could explain it to him. They're quite familiar with federal efforts to turn private medical decisions into matters of public morality, whether getting an abortion, preventing pregnancy after a rape or taking a simple birth control pill.

Under longtime federal law, it is illegal for federally funded clinics and other medical providers to require an employee to provide an abortion if it clashes with his or her personal religious beliefs. That is a reasonable legal protection, as long as the patient can get a swift referral. But the Health and Human Services Department appears eager to dramatically expand that conscience clause, according to draft regulations leaked this summer.

Under the new rules, medical providers would be free to refuse to provide birth control as a matter of conscience. The rules would also define common forms of birth control, including the pill, as abortion. |MORE

 

 

This page last updated December 11, 2008 6:21 .