Minority Leader Calls Contraception Controversial.

From Digby, a look at the real reason Republicans oppose women's reproductive rights (hint: it ain't the "potential babies"):

Boehner is calling provisions for birth control "controversial" and the only thing he can mean by this in this context is that he thinks Americans believe women shouldn't have sex if they don't want to bear children.

Read the whole post here.

Moving Legislation Farther to the Right And Calling It Rights.

Tampa Bay Online reports that a number of new bills regarding "abortion and the unborn" are being proposed in a new wave of anti-choice legislation. Modern liberal presidents, of which one could argue we've really only had two since the legalization of abortion in 1973 (and another could argue that they weren't ultimately that liberal) have always triggered a conservative backlash. We're seeing that now with the Tea Party and the disarray of the Republican party as it searches for it's base and works to regroup.

That patients' rights is a focus of such regrouping and "appeal to the base" is no surprise since the current president is focusing on health care reform. How successful these bills are depends on how attentive the public is to such discriminatory efforts.

Though Republican efforts to limit women's rights (and elders') are nothing new, I expect we'll see a giant push at the state level like the Tampa Bay article reports. The interesting nature of these renewed efforts is the way in which Republicans have adopted "women's rights" language to portray their legislature in a pro-woman light. Conservative groups have long worked to claim ownership of "real American values" and "patriotism" and "individualism." Now they're working to co-opt the language of rights by claiming to ally with older concepts of civil rights activism. Glenn Beck encourages Tea Party protesters to act like Martin Luther King Jr.; Sarah Palin works to portray herself as a liberated woman even going so far as to champion her choice to have a down syndrome child as she works agains women's choice; "pro-life" activists like Jill Stanek have warped statistics to propose that abortion equals black genocide; and the conservative Coalition for Patients' Rights works for discriminatory legislation regarding health care reform.

What's happening in Florida is in line with what's happening across the country. Republicans are appealing to (racist?) anti-government sentiment among ultra-conservatives by introducing increasingly conservative (big government) legislation. It doesn't make sense when examined closely and while it's nothing new, it is increasingly couched in benign language about women's and individual rights.

Here's the interesting clip:

About half of the bills come from legislators running for re-election, in a year when Tea Party activists and other GOP malcontents are challenging candidates to prove their conservative credentials. At least one bill was scheduled for a hearing early in the session, by a Republican committee chairwoman who is running for governor.

John Stemberger, of the Florida Family Policy Council, said he's delighted to see this year's show of pro-life initiative. Lawmakers' votes and sponsorship of at least some of the bills, he said, will factor prominently in the guide to political candidates his organization compiles each year for socially conservative voters.

"There's a frustration, I think, in the social conservative community, that Legislature has not been responsive," he said.

Political scientist Darryl Paulson who is a Republican, speculated that "many of these politicians are engaging in symbolic politics," appealing to their base.

Most of the sponsors insist their bills are not intended to interfere with a woman's ability to get an abortion, though all are Republicans who oppose the procedure.

Far Religious Right Attacks Coakley for Supporting Emergency Contraception for Rape Victims.

The Massachussetts senate race, in the wake of Kennedy's death, is bringing the issue of emergency contraception and Catholic hospitals back into the news - and it's a good thing.

While Drudge and others are criticizing Martha Coakley, who's running against the creepy "pro-life" candidate Scott Brown, for supporting laws that require Catholic hospitals to administer emergency contraception to rape victims, the straight-forward issue of Catholic doctrinal treatment of a pluralistic society is again getting a necessary spotlight.

The Catholic church is the second largest provider of health care in the US, after Veteran's Affairs. If you stop by here often, you know that the 624 Catholic hospitals in the country, hundreds of long-term care and hospice facilities, and 60 health care networks all operate according to doctrine approved by the USCCB. These directives stipulate that religious ideology be used to refuse common and accepted medical procedures to the millions of patients who pass through Catholic health care institutions each year. Fifty Catholic hospitals in the US are sole providers, the only hospital serving a community, and the difficult economy is forcing Catholic and secular hospitals to merge at an ever-increasing pace which results in further limitation of services such as tubal ligations, fertilization procedures, counseling on STD and AIDS prevention, contraception, and compliance with patients' advance directives at end of life.

Patients go into Catholic institutions expecting to receive modern medical care and find that they are subject to Catholic doctrine. What allows this draconian application of religious ideology to a mixed society, despite tax exempt status and 50% of funding from the federal government, is a series of laws that protect not only individual provider refusal of service - so-called conscience clauses - but those of an institution. And Catholic hospitals are currently able to deny informed consent by not notifying patients of common medical services available, but to not even refer patients to other care facilities for such services.

The Catholic church and allied "pro-life" groups consider some forms of contraception to be abortion and therefore resist state and federal laws regarding distribution of emergency contraception to rape victims. Massachussetts is one of the US states that requires rape victims be informed of and offered EC when they enter a hospital.

Yet multiple studies have found that Catholic hospitals across the country have worked around such a requirement, offering EC only after it is proven (via yet more tests) that the woman is not pregnant. In other words, the Catholic church is not complying with the law. Coakley has brought this up as an important issue and opponents are using it to discredit her campaign.

Studies have shown that even Catholics strongly oppose the USCCBs teachings. A full 97% of Catholic women will use some form of birth control in their lifetimes.

By continuing to treat women with discrimination, Catholic hospitals are applying restrictions that are not supported by their church members nor society. Coakley is right to bring this issue to the light. Women traumatized by rape should not be shamed nor denied modern medical treatment simply because they've wandered into a Catholic hospital.

We have laws that prevent discrimination against women. They should be enforced.

UPDATE: Don't miss this new research paper at SSRN on conscience and emergency contraception.

The Conscience of Pharmacists in the UK.

I don't know much about the profession of pharmacy. I have only used a pharmacist for various reasons related to birth control and I can't say I have an affinity for any I've encountered at the many drug stores I've been to around the world. I have gone to a pharmacy for one reason: to get the drugs a doctor has prescribed for me.

In the US we are waiting in a grey area for the US government to rescind the discriminatory Bush "conscience clause" that grants nearly anyone working in the medical profession to exercise their religious ideology to refuse services to patients. It's a horror for any woman to encounter government sanctioned discrimination for her lifestyle or reproductive needs and I hope the pressure being exerted by women's and patients' rights advocates will sway the Obama administration to deny those in positions of medical authority from abusing their power to impose sanctions on any one.

As we wait for a decision to come down here in the US, Britain is having its own battle over the exercised consciences of pharmacists. The Mail Online has a story about the questions the Council for Health Care Regulatory Excellence is asking about the continued practice there that religious ideology may be used to deny a patient a prescription for medication. From the article:

To alarm, however, the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, a Government quango that oversees the health professions, is asking whether the practice should continue.

Calls for the conscience clause to be scrapped have come from pharmacists as well as groups such as the National Secular Society.

But anti-abortionists are warning the code of ethics is in danger of being ‘hijacked by an anti-life agenda’.

The consultation, which ends on January 12, is part of plans to set up a new General Pharmaceutical Council to regulate the profession.

The Department of Health denied that Ministers, who have been struggling to bring down teenage pregnancy rates, had any role in the questionnaire.

Some experts have questioned whether the clause is ‘in keeping with the rising rights and expectations of Health Service users’.

The Church of England, however, says many Christians would wish for their right to refuse emergency contraception to be preserved.

Get that? Choosing to take birth control means you're "anti life." So who should best decide when you have children? Your pharmacist.

On the one hand, I feel strongly that no one should be required to perform a service that violates their religion. Yet, this right of conscience can't impede one's performance of a task that so deeply and personally effects other's lives. If pharmacies continue to staff employees who oppose performing even the most basic duties of their job - like filling prescriptions for birth control in any form - the pharmacy should also ensure that patients have access to an employee who will do their job.

And giving entire health care organizations the right to a conscience - as here in the US has led to the second largest provider of health care services, the Catholic church, doing so with unchecked discrimination against women, gays, and the elderly - is an unconscionable denial of patients' rights.

Watching the battle over pharmacists' consciences in Britain may help us to understand what comes for us here in the US. I've used a clinic for my reproductive health care since I returned to New York. Beyond the nasty picketers outside who assume that all clinic attendees are there for abortion, I find clinics better meet and understand women's needs now that shaming and discrimination have invaded hospitals and expenses have driven many of us on the lower income brackets away from private doctors. And I've given up on chemical birth control. Thirty dollars a month was just out of the question now that I work for myself.

But I was fortunate enough to have a $500 nest egg I could put down for an IUD. (Sterilization is still completely out of the question for single, childless women who don't want to have children but also don't deem psychological evaluation - a requirement for such women to receive sterilization, as if choosing not to have children makes you crazy - as a suitable requirement for such a reproductive decision.)

In other words, like millions of women who know what it's like to manage the hassle of doctors and pharmacists when earning little income, I've found another path to reproductive services. But I recognize that I'm privileged. Such policies as the US should strike down and the UK is reconsidering do the most damage to those who don't have the same privilege and resources that I do. Not only is allowing pharmacists to decide who has effective birth control discriminatory against those who don't hold such religious values, it perpetuates the class divide in this country that has kept women without the freedoms or privacy to make their own health care decisions - most often the very women who are economically, socially, and educationally most discriminated against in the first place.

Such policies shouldn't be upheld; they should be deemed illegal.

No to the Casey Compromise.

The Center for Reproductive Rights dissects the Casey Amendment and tells us what's wrong with it:

There are three reasons that the Senate health care reform bill should not adopt the antidiscrimination amendment – or language similar to it – proposed by Sen. Robert Casey (D.-Penn.). The Senate healthcare reform bill currently prohibits discrimination against individuals or health care facilities on the basis of “willingness or unwillingness” to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions (emphasis added). The Casey proposal would add protection against discrimination by federal and state governmental agencies, but would only make such protection available to individuals and health care entities that do not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

You can read the entire article at the link above.

DeMint and the "Pro-Life" Agenda.

Check out this interview with Senator Jim DeMint on what the health care bill will cover. He rings the "euthanasia"/assisted suicide bell and talks about the "animosity" this administration shows to a "pro-life" agenda.

His logic would be just fine if there were some facts behind it. His willingness to compromise human rights of his constituents and all Americans is stunning. And religious. And the nonchalance he takes with my reproductives rights should be shaming. He's not speaking for his wife and daughters who have the ability to no manage their health in a way that opposes their conscience. He wants to tell all others what to believe and how to act.

The very simple premise here is this: DeMint and fellow "pro-life" individuals, Senators, Representatives, and activists, claim religious freedom and moral superiority (see the interview at Religion Dispatches today on moral talk) and they want us all to be subject to them.

He assumes that because the "pro-life" segment of society is unwilling to stop at anything less than their moral/religious line, that the Democrats are too. I very much wish he were right.

White House to Reverse Conscience Clause.

Woah! Sorry for the false alarm, folks. I got duped by a wayward google alert that pulled up a February story, not a current one. I hope the white house waits until after health care reform goes through to revisit provider refusals!

CNN is reporting that the White House will reverse the provider refusal laws, or the conscience clause, signed into law by departing President Bush last January, on Friday.

It expanded on a 30-year-old law establishing a "conscience clause" for "health-care professionals who don't want to perform abortions."

Under the rule, workers in health-care settings -- from doctors to janitors -- can refuse to provide services, information or advice to patients on subjects such as contraception, family planning, blood transfusions and even vaccine counseling if they are morally against it.

"We recognize and understand that some providers have objections to providing abortions, according to an official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The official declined to be identified because the policy change had not been announced. "We want to ensure that current law protects them.

"But we do not want to impose new limitations on services that would allow providers to refuse to provide to women and their families services like family planning and contraception that would actually help prevent the need for an abortion in the first place."

Many health-care organizations, including the American Medical Association, believe health-care providers have an obligation to their patients to advise them of the options despite their own beliefs. Critics of the current rule argue there are already laws on the books protecting health-care professionals when it comes to refusing care for personal reasons.

Dr. Suzanne T. Poppema, board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, praised Obama "for placing good health care above ideological demands."

"Physicians across the country were outraged when the Bush administration, in its final days, limited women's access to reproductive health care," she said. "Hundreds of doctors protested these midnight regulations and urged President Obama to repeal them quickly. We are thrilled that President Obama took the first steps today to ensure that our patients' health is once again protected."

But Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said, "Protecting the right of all health-care providers to make professional judgments based on moral convictions and ethical standards is foundational to federal law and is necessary to ensure that access to health care is not diminished, which will occur if health-care workers are forced out of their jobs because of their ethical stances.

"President's Obama's intention to change the language of these protections would result in the government becoming the conscience and not the individual. It is a person's right to exercise their moral judgment, not the government's to decide it for them."

An announcement reversing the current rule is expected early next week, the HHS official said. Any final action would have to be taken after a 30-day public comment period.

Looking At the Manhattan Declaration from Abroad.

From Thaindian News:

Washington, Nov. 22, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The “Manhattan Declaration: A Call To Christian Conscience” was publicly announced on Friday. The declaration has a set of appeals to a rapidly tolerant society that seems to agree to those that the Christian faith allegedly condemns. The declaration clearly states that the followers would even resort to a civil disobedience movement if required, in order to uphold the principles guide-lined in the declaration. Needless to say, the declaration came as a huge threat to the LGBT community as it denounced marriage between the same sex.

The declaration also denounced anything that hinders the normal process of life, will not be followed by the Christian institutions. By “anti-life”activities, the declaration stated euthanasia, that is touted as “assisted suicide”, abortion and “embryo destructive research.” Relationships between a man and a man or a woman and a woman or between transsexuals and bisexuals were tagged as immoral by the declaration. The declaration made it very clear that such relationships will in no way be treated as normal or as marriages. The declaration also made it pretty clear that the Catholics and the Evangelists would not refrain from preaching the ideals that they have taught so far, no matter what the state decides on such matters.

The Manhattan Declaration is a direct blow to the existing system of tolerance that seems to prevail in the atmosphere regarding same sex, transsexual and bisexual relationships. It also delivers a major punch to the fact that the states are already pushing for legal euthanasia. The leaders of the Catholic, Evangelist and the Orthodox groups supported their views by saying that these convictions are the basis of their religion and that its a necessity to follow them.