With all the attention being given to the two guys who want to be POTUS it is easy to forget about the recovering alcoholic, born-again, mentally disabled guy that is still there.
Well he has been hard at work trying to push through his agenda to make America a lot more like Saudi Arabia.
Something that has been a little under the radar because of the focus on the election campaigns is a new rule Bush is proposing at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, wrote a nice op-ed piece about it today in the New York Times that explains it better than I can.
But it basically comes down to two main things.
First, any health care service that receives any federal financing, which would be almost all of them since a good majority of doctors and hospitals see Medicaid and Medicare patients, would have to certify in writing that none of their employees are required to participate in any sort of medical service that they find morally objectionable.
What this means is that the $10-an-hour, born-again Christian nurses assistant a doctor has on staff will be able to refuse to go to the medicine cabinet to grab a supply of morning after pills for the rape victim sitting in the office, or a supply of birth control pills for a teenager, to get the pamphlets on safe sex and even refuse to assist with a patient if it is a gay person.
Basically, doctors would be barred from firing crazy wackos who refuse to do the job they were hired to do, putting the welfare of patients at risk and raising the cost of health care (doctors will have to spend a lot of time doing the work of nurses, nurse assistants and lab techs)
The second thing is that it allows health care providers to refuse to participate in any medical procedure that goes against their religious belief. There are a lot of things that could fall under this, but we all know that the effect of this will be that women and young girls who want birth control or information on abortions will be denied both services and information if they walk in to the wrong doctor's office or live in an area where there is only one option.
Combined with another provision of providing federal funding to the so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" - clinics run by anti-choice fanatics whose goal is to prevent women from getting information about birth control and reproductive health - it is obvious what this misogynistic, anti-reproductive bill is all about.
He's doing his best to chip away at the rights of women and just about the rest of us in the four months he's got left.
Let's not forget he's still there.
Read more about the proposed rule at Planned Parenthood and then take time to submit a comment letter to the Department of Health and Human Services. Planned Parenthood has one already set up that you can personalize and then submit through them right to the DHHS.
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Blocking Care for Women
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2 comments:
In most businesses, anyone refusing to do the boss's bidding would be fired. If the doctor orders a particular drug or treatment, and his nurse/assistant refuses to comply with his order, she shouldn't be working there in the first place. Same goes for pharmacies. Bush has spent 8 years trying to force-feed his brand of morality down our throats, and this is one of the results. Who knows what else he has done that we don't know about.
And its exactly the kind of shit that gets swept under the carpet with the media. Ugh.
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