President Bush slashes and burns women's health rights in the eleventh hour of his presidency

As W departs the Oval Office, he leaves women a big "eff you and the Handmaid's Tale you rode in on" with the revised Health and Human Services rule regarding birth control and hormone supplementation. In short, he erected a barrier the equivalent of the fence between the US and Mexico---women can probably go under it or over it in some spots, but it creates a potentially huge obstacle.

With the new rule, women face blocked access to birth control and hormone therapy among other gynecological health care. Health care providers and pharmacists, for example, can refuse to provide women needed treatment or medication if they "ethically" oppose it.

Never mind these crucial portions of the Hippocratic oath (especially the last one):

• To practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, and to try to avoid harming them.
   
• Never to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else's interest.
   
• To keep the good of the patient as the highest priority.

I've written about this before it was a done deal in, "HHS new rules document proposes religious tenets as basis of health care for women," in an effort to bring attention and opposition to the rule. Many others did the same, and many women banded together to try to protect our health rights as patients. In fact, the proposed rule faced ardent across the board objection from groups as diverse as Planned Parenthood and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to the New York Times.

Unfortunately, we failed, and even though HHS missed the typical November 1 deadline for rules changes, the agency is allegedly ready implement the new rule. Now we must wait to see if President-Elect Obama will be able to unravel this oppression of women's health rights and restore our health protections to us.

This is a blatantly misogynistic oppression of women's rights and is a clear flag and signal of the low esteem and utter lack of respect the Bush Administration has for women's rights and women's health rights.

At the bottom line, what is best for the patient far outweighs any opinion or preference by the health care work. Protecting life and health trumps. Period.

Read what other excellent writers are saying about this topic and other crucial women's health rights topics (via the Daily Women's Health Policy Report from the National partnership for Women and Families):

~ "Repeal the Global Gag Rule," Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), Huffington Post blogs: President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress "can place American foreign policy firmly on the side of free speech, of women's health, and of doctors and care providers who understand that family planning is a cornerstone of social stability, economic growth and public health in the developing world" by repealing the "global gag rule," also called the Mexico City policy, Lowey writes in a blog entry. This step can be done "quickly, simply, cleanly, without a penny of cost to the taxpayers," she adds. The rule would be "patently unconstitutional" if applied in the U.S., Lowey writes. She continues, "Abroad, [the rule] is responsible for untold misery and, in tragic irony, has almost certainly increased the number of unintended pregnancies and put millions of women's and children's lives at risk." Lowey writes that as a Representative, her "fight to overturn [the rule] has been stymied by Republican majorities" and threatened by a veto from President Bush. She writes that she looks forward to working with the Obama administration to finally repeal the rule, concluding, "Few actions would benefit more people with less effort, or send a more dramatic signal to the world that America is prepared once again to be a leader for individual rights, personal dignity and commonsense policy that saves lives" (Lowey, Huffington Post blogs, 12/11).

~ "Conscience Clauses: Justifying Bigotry on Religious Grounds," Pamela Merritt, RH Reality Check: Merritt writes, "The thought of people refusing to serve a person of color due to their personal objection to desegregation is now considered indefensible and a violation of the law, but refusal of service due to personal religious objections is not a thing of the past." Refusals to provide health care services or fill prescriptions are "threats to the rights and health of women, and defending against those threats and the erosion of rights that they represent is a crucial front in the reproductive justice struggle," according to Merritt. She writes that a "key question" regarding health care conscience rules -- which allow providers to refuse services based on moral or religious beliefs -- is "whether a health care insurance provider can refuse to cover services on religious grounds if they receive federal funds." One example is the Catholic health care system, which the group Catholics for Choice has examined in a report, Merritt writes. According to Merritt, the report found that there are "few formal regulations that require health plans that refuse to provide family planning services to disclose this clearly on marketing and enrollment materials," which can lead employers to "select a plan and have no idea that it limits or denies access to reproductive health care due to a lack of coverage." She continues, "It's not as if there aren't ways to balance individual freedoms," noting that the report identified several methods for Catholic health care plans to offer access to reproductive health services "without compromising their ... beliefs." She writes that the "key element" for Catholic systems is "distancing the Catholic plan from the direct provision of and/or direct payment for forbidden services," such as by contracting with a non-Catholic provider or arranging payment for reproductive health services through a third party (Merritt, RH Reality Check, 12/11).

~ "'Embryos on Ice' ... and Other Absurdities," Judie Brown, American Life League blog: The "most heartless" term used to describe "preborn children" is "'Embryos on Ice,'" Brown writes in response to recent news coverage regarding options for excess frozen embryos created for fertility treatments. Brown writes that "we are talking about children," not "'fertilized eggs' or 'leftovers' or rejects tossed off an assembly line." She continues that the parents of these embryos "have unwittingly contributed to the ongoing growth of the culture of death by agreeing with the hypothesis that there are embryonic children who are somehow less human than those who were implanted in their mom and brought to term ... as if there are some embryonic children who are really children and others who are not." Fertility treatments are creating a "dehumanization" that is "unhealthy for parents, the children that have been welcomed and the children who may be killed ... or simply left in a tray somewhere to die," she writes. She concludes, "By restoring the legal recognition of personhood to every innocent human being from his beginning, practices such as [in vitro fertilization] will cease, because every human embryo will have the very same rights you and I have" (Brown, American Life League blog, 12/10).

~ "Pro-Lifers Love Babies So Much They Want To Defund Planned Parenthood So That You Get Pregnant," Feministe: "For most of us, the fact that [Planned Parenthood] provides contraception to low-income women and teenagers is a good thing, because it means fewer unwanted pregnancies (and fewer abortions)," a Feministe blog entry says. Although abortion services comprise only 3% of Planned Parenthood's budget, "for anti-choice leaders, contraception and abortion are part of the same problem: They allow women to 'get away' with having sex, and that is a big problem in their ideal world." The blog continues that people are losing their health insurance coverage because of the current economic crisis and high unemployment rate, adding that it is "abhorrent that anti-choicers would choose this moment to try and strip resources to one of the country's largest providers of reproductive health care -- especially a provider that offers crucial services like contraception and cancer screenings." The blog concludes, "Shame on anti-choicers for their politically motivated targeting of [Planned Parenthood] -- and their attempts to block low-income women from accessing basic reproductive care" (Feministe, 12/11).

~ "W's Parting Gifts to Women," Martha Burk, Huffington Post blogs: President Bush is giving women "some new regulations that will keep on giving us trouble for years to come" before he leaves office, Burk writes in a blog entry. Burk adds that Bush is "deputizing health workers as watchdogs" through the proposed HHS conscience rule, which would permit health providers who receive federal grants to opt out of medical care based on their moral or religious beliefs, because he "know[s] that the country is not inclined to support new laws against abortion." Another "gift" Bush is giving women is "a weakening of our already very weak" Family and Medical Leave Act by "making it harder for workers to exercise their rights" under the law, Burk writes. Bush also is giving "new premiums and higher co-payments for Medicaid" to low-income women, Burk says, adding that experts have predicted the changes will "cause Medicaid patients to go without medical services." Burk adds, "[W]ith the economy in shambles and two wars to worry about, these concerns will most likely be pushed to the bottom of the pile for at least a couple of years," concluding, "After that, the process [to overturn the regulations] could take up to a year and a half" (Burk, Huffington Post blogs, 12/11).

Comments

[Liz]

I have a question - if I were a doctor or a pharmacist who had a moral objection to old men having more sex than God intended them to have, could I refuse to write or fill a prescription for Viagra according to these new rules? I think it might be worth testing that out as a way to challenge this...

[Summer]

I'm just counting down the days til Bush leaves office and hoping like hell Obama can erase this shit quickly. Why can't be be a good little Lame Duck and go play cowboy on his ranch instead of this scorched earth crap?

[Laura]

I just cannot believe that bush and co. still have the energy to ruin even more things for the rest of us. Apparently they are still without remorse, still without an iota of compassion. Still without a moral fiber. Still without a conscience.

[Julie Pippert]

Liz, I promise you, that VERY thing occurred to me. In fact, as insurance companies denied ovulation stimulation medication at the same time it approved drugs like Viagra, it occurred to me to really wonder: were men getting to have sex more important than women's reproduction choices? Clearly, yes. Niiiiice.

Summer, I wish he would.

Laura, i completely agree.

[Leigh Finnder]

Why is it that the democrats insist on distorting facts so that they can twist the politics towards their own moral persuasions? I mean if you only knew the half of it. Republicans don't want to limit women's access to birth control and taking funding away from Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with preventing access to birth control for low income women....Planned Parenthood has systematically encouraged women over and over to have abortions by witholding information about the development of a fetus to encourage women to think they just have a "mass of tissue" in their wombs...not a real baby with a heartbeat. In fact, they don't care about women at all (not in a real way), otherwise they would provide all the facts and encourage them to look at other options that in the long run would actually benefit them (i.e. no abortion likely would mean less psychological devastation and less physical problems too). As for all the other points, I just don't have the time or energy...

[health advocate]

Something needs to be done fast

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[Electronic Medical Records]

Thank god bush is out of offic e, now we have to pick up the pieces and move forward with healthcare and our economy

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[healthy cures]

I have allot of the same thoughts as you as a mother. You have explained this better than I ever could. great job.

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