Thu 21 Aug 2008
According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration has announced that it intends to push for a federal regulation that “empowers federal health officials to pull funding from more than 584,000 hospitals, clinics, health plans, doctors’ offices and other entities if they do not accommodate employees who refuse to participate in care they find objectionable on personal, moral or religious grounds.”
The headline for the Post story is instructive in showing how the media minimizes the rights of the female patient when it comes to reproductive health: “Plan Would Protect Health-Care Workers Who Object to Abortion.”
The article actually goes on to explain that supporters of the regulation are confident that it is broadly worded enough to do much more than bar health care workers from being forced to perform abortions - something that in fact very rarely occurs. Instead, the regulation could be used to “protect” pharmacists who object to filling prescriptions for birth control pills and Plan B emergency contraception. Moreover, it could be used to require that a hospital not only “accommodate” a doctor or nurse actively involved in performing a procedure, but also the worker who sterilizes instruments for surgery.
In effect, the regulation would function as a big stick to threaten and punish health care facilities that receive federal funding and also provide reproductive health care for women. These facilities must either accept the possibility of massive interference in the assignment of staff and the scheduling of health care procedures, or lose their funding.
On the surface “protecting” the consciences of health care workers sounds noble. After all, who would even think of forcing a doctor or nurse to do something that is against their strongly-held personal beliefs?
But those of us old enough to remember the 1980’s can recall when some health care workers - doctors, dentists, nurses, phlebotomists - refused to treat people with HIV/AIDS or people who they believed (mostly because the patient was gay or believed to be gay) had AIDS.
In areas other than women’s reproductive health, do we generally accept the idea that health care workers get to pick and choose who and how they will treat? While some fringe elements defended the anti-AIDS bigots, the vast majority of health care professionals and professional organizations denounced the refusal to treat as utterly inconsistent with practicing ethically in their fields.
Refusing to provide health care to women is immoral, period. If someone wishes to insulate himself or herself from the chance of being asked to prescribe birth control pills or assist in an abortion of a 12 year old girl raped by a family member, then there is a simple alternative. Don’t practice health care in our community. Period.