Rape Victims and the Conscience Clause.

Godless Feminist has a post about the motivations of the conscience clause, now legal in a majority of US states, that allows a provider to refuse emergency contraception to rape victims - often without informed consent or even referrals. Some states like Massachusetts have laws that require the administration of EC to rape victims - and Catholic facilities, the second largest of emergency room health care in the US, have staunchly worked to maintain such "conscience clause" denial of a rape victims rights.

One salient point made by GF is that, in the wake of all the "no abortion with my tax dollars" noise, is that Catholic hospitals - indeed most hospitals - serve a pluralistic society and are 50% funded by federal dollars through Medicare and Medicaid. Those who don't want to pay for health care that violates their faith best check their hypocrisy when making this argument.

Here's a clip from the post:

The rights of a hospital, pharmacy, and health care professional should never be allowed to supersede the rights of patients — especially women rape victims. It isn’t the well-being, health, or future life of that health care worker that is at stake. It is the woman rape victim’s.

And every pregnancy is a potential threat to a woman’s health, well-being, and life — including her economic well-being. Anyone from a nurse to a doctor to a pharmacist to a lawmaker or a judge who deprives a woman of the choice to prevent a pregnancy, to end a pregnancy — especially as the result of a rape — should be forced to contribute to the support of every unwillingly pregnant woman and to both mother and child after that fetus becomes a post-born child.

Rape victims who are ER patients should not be made victims again by hospital staff and religious organizations — especially religious hospitals that qualify for tax-exempt 501(3)(c) status for whom the public at large must pick up the shifted tax burden tab.

There is nothing decent, caring, or moral about forcing a physically and emotionally traumatized woman to risk pregnancy or track down an emergency contraception provider. There is nothing moral about stopping a rape victim (or any other woman) from preventing a pregnancy she does not want, or cannot endure.

Rapists do not have a Constitutional right to force a woman to breed for them and ER staff, hospitals, et al, have no Constitutional right to force rape victims to bear their rapist’s progeny.