I knew Bush would try to slip one under the wire...

[mousme]

To be honest, I expected another war. What he's slipping under the wire, however is legislation that would allow any medical professional to refuse their services to a woman needing an abortion, on religious or ethical grounds. No matter who: the doctor, the nurse, the anaesthesiologist, anyone could walk away from a woman in need, even if they're the only one for two hundred miles who can perform the job.

Clinics that receive government funds would have to abide by this rule, and could not fire someone for not doing their job, even if they are the only person in a hundred miles who could do it. Even if it is the only abortion-providing facility in the state.

It's sneaky, in a brilliantly twisted way. No need to make abortion illegal, which would be a messy legal tangle. No, instead, you can just make it impossible to obtain the service.

Props to the_xtina for pointing me to this entry, which explains it better than I can, and also gives many handy links to follow if you want to take action. Please, if you're an American citizen in particular, take a few moments to write an email, at the very least.

Comments

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Furthermore (egads I'm chatty today), as I was saying to a couple of people further up:

There appears to be a growing medical and legal movement of "conscience" in which the practitioners are deliberately choosing this field of medical practice in order to promote their religious views and impose them on their patients. They appear to feel that it's part of their religious calling.

While in theory I'm all on board with doctors who take their Hippocratic oath seriously behaving according to their conscience, I can't in good faith support legislation that would open the door to denying women this kind of care. It's easy enough to say "Well, just don't become an OB-GYN." The problem is that 1) Some people appear to be choosing that path specifically in order to promote their religious views, and 2) Sometimes there isn't any choice when it comes to which doctor to see, in remote communities for instance.

In the case of the U.S., there are added complications (which I don't think we even have in Canada). As ebonypearl put it:

Except the patient doesn’t get to have a choice. For many women, we already have to travel long distances to get to a single doctor who can or will perform necessary female medical procedures. In some cases, women have to travel out of state to get to the nearest doctor to help them – and, oh yeah – some states have made it a criminal offense for women to cross state lines for medical care.

On the face of it, the legislation makes a sad sort of sense. Once you start scratching at the surface, it looks really open to abuse.