Last week, the Bush administration's Department of Heath and Human Services issued a regulation that will allow doctors and other health care workers to arbitrarily deny information and services to patients on moral or "religious" grounds.
The regulation goes into effect in mid-January.
Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, describes some potential consequences of this regulation:
Under this new rule, doctors and health care workers of all kinds can deny patients vital health care information and services, without the patient even knowing. No patient is exempt from the reach of this rule: sexual assault victims could be denied information about emergency contraception that could prevent unintended pregnancy, moms hoping to time their pregnancies can be denied contraception at their local pharmacy, young adults hoping to be tested for sexually transmitted infections could be denied treatment by health care employees who oppose premarital sex.>> Read more of Richards' comments.
In other words, the health care workers are no longer required to do their jobs, i.e., to promote the health of their patients or to fulfill a doctor's orders.
Suddenly, the medical profession is no longer dedicated above all to providing health care. Now the first step in health care is to make a moral judgment about the patient and the potential treatments and services.
It's as if women are mere children who need to have our lives controlled by others who "know what's best" for us.
If men could get pregnant, this surely wouldn't be an issue.
>> Read the text of the regulation.
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