I’ve already written about the new “conscience†rules that would allow just about everybody working in most hospitals and pharmacies to second guess doctors and refuse to follow medical procedures for “moral” reasons. Better to kill a few patients than to morally contaminate oneself by cleaning instruments that might terminate a pregnancy, right?
We have plenty of real-world examples of the many ways “conscience” (note to righties: the quotation marks indicate irony) puts the health of patients at risk. These include an ambulance driver refusing to transport a patient in pain and pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions — prescriptions prescribed to treat disease, btw, not contraceptives — from disapproved-of clinics. The Bush Administration’s rules could create chaos in the delivery of medical care and put many patients at risk, sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with sex. Not that there are any excuses where sex is involved.
An editorial in the New York Times addresses this:
A parting gift to the far right, the new regulation aims to hinder women’s access to abortion, contraceptives and the information necessary to make decisions about their own health. What makes it worse is that the policy is wrapped up in a phony claim to safeguard religious freedom.
The law has long allowed doctors and nurses to refuse to participate in an abortion. Mr. Leavitt’s changes elevate the so-called right to refuse beyond reason to an increased number of medical institutions and a broad range of health care workers and services — including abortion referrals, unbiased counseling and provision of emergency contraception, even to rape victims.
Commenting on this travesty is one of our favorite candidates for the character disorder hall of fame, William Teach, who comes by here to comment from time to time. I don’t remember if I’ve banned him, and if he drops in again y’all can have fun with him, as you usually do.
Teach is, of course, in denial about the danger these “rules” pose for everyone’s health care — I mean, who cares about the real world when you’re a rightie? — and the injustice of denying rape victims contraceptive information. I thought this passage in particular was illuminating:
So, let me see, Bush has, to paraphrase Ann Coulter, undermined a women’s “right” to have casual, irresponsible, unprotected sex with men she doesn’t want to have children with.
Earlier this week, Dennis Prager revealed a sexual backwardness that defies description — I’d call it sexual autism, except that’s an insult to autistics — and our buddy R.S. McCain chimed in (same link) with an apology for sexual exploitation and forced marriage of girls as young as 12.
I’m beginning to think that movement conservatism is, at base, a kind of psychological-sexual dysfunction. You know these guys are terrified of women’s sexuality. They’d have us women in burqas and condone stoning of rape victims if they could get away with it. They’d deny that, but in fact, what is the difference between denying a rape victim reproductive rights and stoning her for unchastity? It’s a difference purely in degree, not in kind, rooted in the same twisted views of women and sexuality.