Repro Health Hub

HHS Sec. Mike Leavitt wrote again yesterday about Bush’s proposed regulations that would classify contraception as abortion. But from reading Leavitt’s post, you wouldn’t know that contraception was the crux of the issue.

Leavitt wrote:

This is not a discussion about the rights of a woman to get an abortion. The courts have long ago identified that right and continue to define its limits. This regulation would not be aimed at changing or redefining any of that. This is about the right of a doctor to not participate if he or she chooses for reasons they consider a matter of conscience. Does the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association believe we can protect by Constitution, statute and practice rights of free speech, race, religion, and abortion—but not conscience?

Is the fear here that so many doctors will refuse that it will somehow make it difficult for a woman to get an abortion? That hasn’t happened, but what if it did? Wouldn’t that be an important and legitimate social statement?

I want to reiterate. If the Department of Health and Human Services issues a regulation on this matter, it will aim at one thing, protecting the right of conscience of those who practice medicine. From what I’ve read the last few days, there’s a serious need for it.

As I wrote the other day, don’t federal laws already protect doctors’ rights to opt out of performing abortions? Where is this “serious need” that Leavitt stresses? This seems more like a ploy to shift the focus from the medical issue of access to contraception to a theoretical, abstract notion of the rights of man and citizen. Leavitt’s hoping to come across more like a modern day Enlightenment philosophe than an anti-choice Bush appointee. It ain’t working.

Leavitt also alludes to a mass movement of doctors refusing to care for women facing unintended pregnancies to make a “social statement.” Should medicine and a federal department charged with providing for the health of the nation be in the business of making social statements?

Scott Swenson on RH Reality Check had an interesting take yesterday, writing that despite all the talk of rights of conscience, the patient’s need should prevail:

The question, Sec. Leavitt, is not about people checking their beliefs at the door. Medical ethics and morality dictate that it is the patient, the person in need of help, sometimes in crisis, whose conscience and beliefs matter in the moment they are seeking health care services. Medical professionals who have a problem dispensing contraception should not choose professions where they will be asked for contraception, or as a commenter on another blog wrote, “if this is about people living their religious convictions, then they should have enough faith not to choose work that conflicts with their convictions.” There is plenty demand for medical professionals in fields in which practitioners will never come in contact with people seeking contraception.

By Tara Sweeney

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.