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.”
Conscience Clause? Where did that come from? Someone slipped that one by me. The more I google, the more I unearth and the angrier I get. This thread needs to be a work in progress. First of all, anyone who has knowledge of Fimian’s position on allowing pharmacists to cherry pick what prescriptions they will fill, please let us know. I don’t have a bone to pick with private pharmacies who post, in clear view on their door that they do not sell or dispense contraception. However, other stores open to the public without disclaimers should really not be involved in type of exclusionary behavior. I consider it equivalent to the Muslim cab driver who wouldn’t let bottles of liquor in his cab. Find another job. 