During the Bush Administration, the ‘conscience clause’ allowed health care providers to decline care to patients if it would violate their religious beliefs. President Obama has tried to clarify the new rules which come after consideration of more than 300,000 public comments. Basically, the new rules say that contraception is not abortion; specifically: “There is no indication that the federal health care provider conscience statutes intended that the term ‘abortion’ included contraception.”
According to NPR:
“The language published today reaffirms the principles of protecting the doctor-patient relationship by repealing the most onerous and intrusive parts of Bush’s last-minute refusal rule,” said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
NARAL said the rules, as originally written, “could have allowed insurance companies to deny claims for birth control pills, hospitals to refuse emergency contraception to rape survivors, and employees at HMOs to refuse their patients referrals for abortion care.”
But Tony Perkins, president of the anti-abortion Family Research Council, called the changes “a blow both to medicine and the right to practice one’s deeply held convictions.
“It’s a sad fact that discrimination against health care workers who object to participating in abortion is a continuing threat from both federally funded organizations and the government,” Perkins said.
This blurring of contraception and abortion is dangerous. Several years ago many members of the House of Delegates votes to define human life as beginning at fertilization. There is a reason for that sleight of hand. If the bill had passed and if Roe v Wade were overturned, many forms of oral contraception would be illegal since some of those pills prevent implantation. Sneaky sneaky.
I cannot believe that in 2011 we are still discussing a woman’s right to contraception. This is absurd. Thank goodness President Obama defined ‘conscience clause.’ He should have done it the first day he was in office.
Click here to see where Virginia as well as other states stand. The information is from the Guttmacher Institute.
Conscience Clauses are very dangerous – and not just for women seeking birth control or abortifacients.
Imagine you have HIV and you need antivirals. You are also a gay man who some would say is rather obvious….. You go into your local Walgreens and hand your script over to the PharmD. The Pharm D sees the script, sees YOU and IMMEDIATELY assumes you have HIV from homosexual behavior. It is none of the PharmD’s business HOW you became infected – be it from a transfusion, homosexual sex…or from having sex with a woman that ONE TIME. But the PharmD is a very religious person and their book of religion says that homosexuality is a sin and such sin must be punished. You see this man before you, who you assume got sick because of the “sin” and you decide that because your religion wishes to eliminate this abominable sin, you within your conscience, will refuse to dispense.
OR
Let’s say you are a college student and you hook up with a guy one night at a frat party. You both had a lot to drink, and at the time it seemed like a good idea to have sex. He used a condom, but it came off sometime during intercourse. You find out a few days/weeks later he has a disease and he gave it to you. You make an appointment with a local MD off campus. Little do you know that MD is very religious and does not condone sex before marriage. But he is in your parents’ insurance network, when no other MD in town, for miles IS. So you make the appt. go to it and see the MD. You tell the MD in strictest confidentiality and professsional trust that you are very certain you have a STD and need help. He then proceeds to give you a lecture on immorality, sin, and the horrors of pre-marital sex. He refuses to treat your “minor” condition and refers you to someone who will. He refuses because it is within his conscience of his religious beliefs that those who stray need to be atught a lesson.
……………
Think this is too much? Just a few weeks ago a pharmacist in Idaho refused to dispense anti-bleeding medication for a woman who had an abortion. The clinic where the woman had the abortion called in a script for her, and the pharmD REFUSED to dispense it unless she knew if the woman had given birth or had an abortion (the medicine is used for EITHER post condition to halt bleeding). The Nurse refused to disclose to the PharmD what procedure the woman had, for by LAW she would be in violation of the patient’s rights. The PharmD hung up on the clinic.
And a couple of months later when this story broke out, Idaho Pharmacist Board ruled that the PharmD was not violating ANY law, for she was within her rights to exercise her conscience NOT to assist anyone with medicine dispensation who had an abortion, for she disapproved of abortion.
These are some very scarry times….for if they can come for your birth control, they can come for anything ELSE.
Let me add that in the Idaho case…the refusal of medication was a few months ago and the story came out only a few weeks ago….sorry for the timeline confusion.
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/437525/anti-choice_pharmacist_refused_drugs_to_bleeding_woman/
NMB, those are horrible stories. Thank you for making this policy decision more meaningful with real life situations.
Those people need to be stripped of their licenses in my opinion.
I don’t want to get in the larger debate of telling doctors and pharmacists that they must do something (Obamacare handles a lot of that already) but what’s the issue with a person going to another Pharmacist? I mean you can’t throw a cat in PWC without hitting a CVS, Walgreens or RiteAid.
Well some PharmD’s refuse to hand back the script.
But really, whoy SHOULD you have to go to another store? If they don’t have your meds, that’s one thing. Shoppers Pharmacy on Liberia used to be CONSTANTLY out of the medicine I or members of my family were prescribed. I stopped going to them because I was sick of being told they would have to place an order for it and I could come back the next day. With 2 kids in tow, it is a MAJOR PITA to round them up, get them in the car and go to another pharmacy.
But anyways, why should you have to go to another store if the pharmacy HAS your medication and someone is there to fill your script. You should not HAVE to go anywhere else because someone’s PERSONAL agenda will prohibit you from getting the medicine you need – be it BC pills, oxycontin, antibiotics, or viagra. If your MD has no problem with prescribinig it, the role of the pharmacist is to fill the script.
Furthermore – what if you live in a very rural area and there is not a CVS or Rite Aid on every corner? What if the only pharmacy within 20 miles is Wal Mart or Target? A self-riteous pharmD will do more than inconvenience you. Imagine having no CVS in PWC fill your script, so you have to choose to go to the next nearest one in Stafford or in Loudoun county.
If you are a private pharmacy, you can choose what you will and will not stock, and what you will and will not dispense. But if you work for a corporate chain that agrees to dispense ALL medicines available, regardless of what they are used for, you as an employee agree to either dispense it or hand it to someone else on your staff to do the job you do not want to do for (insert reason here).
I’m in total agreement with you Bubba. I would add one thing, if a pharmacy is going to hire people who are objectors, then they need to make that policy known to the general public. I don’t care if it is only one pharmacist on their staff–that should trigger a public notice requirement. Pretty soon, the objectors might find themselves out of work or all starting up their own pharmacy.
As usual, it seems to me that marinm has missed the forest for the trees.
While on this line–This afternoon, the House of Delegates passed SB 924, a bill that requires the Board of Health to issue regulations for hospitals, nursing homes, and certified nursing facilities. While SB 924 is seemingly unrelated to the topic of reproductive freedom, before passing the bill, the House approved an amendment that includes in the definition of hospitals, “facilities in which 5 or more first trimester abortions per month are performed.”
The amendment reopens the debate we saw earlier in the session over the regulation of abortion clinics in HB 1428, called a TRAP Law (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers). HB 1428, which received full and fair hearings, passed the House (66-Y, 33-N), but was killed in the Senate Education and Health Committee.
If you think this is wrong, please write to your senator asking him/her to vote against this amendment. Moon has links to them a the top of the page under “Virginia politicos and links”.
@George,
Thank you for this information. Unfortunately, we cannot count on Senator Colgan to do the right thing when it comes to reproductive rights. It is important to let him know our wishes.
Planned Parenthood letter to Senator Colgan that you can personalize:
https://secure.ppaction.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=12664&autologin=true&JServSessionIdr004=izhcn53yj5.app214a