Clinton battles Bush on reproductive rights

          WASHINGTON - With election approaching and wedge issues becoming more prominent, the Bush administration is proposing new regulations on which agencies must provide reproductive services on request.

         Pro-choice agencies and officials such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., see the rules as limiting access to contraception and increasing the number of institutions that are allowed to deny women reproductive services, including abortion.

         Clinton said "the regulations could even undermine state laws that ensure survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms."

          Pro-life groups say the rules will protect patients and professionals from being forced to provide prescription drugs and abortion to which they may be conscientiously opposed.

          The pro-choice Center for Reproductive Rights said the draft regulations "purport to educate recipients of (federal) funds of their obligations under the Church and Weldon amendments, which prohibit recipients of federal funds from discriminating against healthcare provides who object to the provision of abortion or sterilization services."

          "In reality," the center said, "the regulations go much further, sweeping contraceptive services under an overly broad definition of abortion, and allowing virtually anyone connected with the provision of services to refuse to participate."

          The center's president, Nancy Northrup, praised Clinton for working to prevent the Bush administration "from politicizing birth control."

          The New York Times reported the Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and certain types of birth control. Hospitals, clinics, researchers and medical schools would have to sign written certifications in order to obtain any funds from the federal government.

          State and local governments would also have to sign the certifications or lose federal funds for hospital and related services.

          House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the plan potentially "is dangerous assault on women's health."

          While most voters' concerns center on the price of gasoline, the security of banks, and the Iraq war, abortion issues still exert a strong pull on traditionalists. A new Quinnipiac University poll shows that nearly two thirds of those surveyed support the 1973 Roe v Wade decision of the Supreme Court, people are still conflicted as to what limits should be placed on abortion rights, with only 38 percent saying it "should be legal in most cases."

          The proposed rules were praised by Concerned Women for America.

          "For over 35 years, federal laws have protected the conscientious rights of healthcare professionals, but they were not fully implemented for lack of thorough regulations to enforce them," said CWA President Wendy Wright. "As more controversial drugs and procedures get introduced, and additional pressure is put on healthcare providers to either compromise their moral commitments or lose their jobs, the need has become greater for regulations to catch up with the law."

          As patients, we rely on healthcare professionals to provide ethical advice and treatments," she said. "Patients will lose trust in the healthcare field if professionals are gagged from giving ethical and well-informed advice or forced to commit procedures or provide drugs that take an innocent life. If healthcare professionals are denied the right to live out their moral beliefs, patients will suffer the consequences."

          Who is right?

--Douglas Turner

   

Comments

[MS]

Im so sick of this issue. it is very very VERY LOW on the priority list yet its still in the news.

[Art Klein]

Please, Please, Please...No more news about pro life - pro choice issues. I am sick and tired of its constant revival.

it is personal thing not worthy of state intervention.

Anyone who revives the issue must begin with the fact that a really decent human being lost his life in Western New York by the hand of a terrorist sniper who thought killing a human being was a moral statement. Now there is a reach for the religious folk to explain.

Anyway, given all the social problems we are dealing with, the government dictating personal decisions by young women has joined the dinosaurs.

[BobbyCat]

I will ditto Art and MS.

It's a real stretch to keep this issue alive. It's been argued ad nausium. Let's restate the digest version: Abortion is regrettable but sometimes necessary; try to minimize its use; promote birth control instead; maintain privacy', and it's the LAW.

Does that about cover it? Enough already.

[Try This]

I have a new and seldom tried idea. If you don't want to have a baby, don't have sex !

[Texas Kid]

This is all Hillary Clinton can think about??? Isn't there an energy crisis going on..or is that too hard to tackle. Might actually require some innovative thinking other than taxing someone to death. You folks sure can pick em. No wonder Obama played her like a piano in the primaries.

[Karen]

I don't think this issue is low on the list of priorities at all. I say this, because I know someone whose daughter was saved at birth-indeed through the last half of a problematic prgnancy-at birth, by Dr Slepian. And, because I know a number of women, whose lives were saved by partial birth abortion, including two who would hav died if the doctor had had to wait for a judge to give an ok. A judge who wasn't a doctor of any kind, not even of law. Of those 6 women, 4 went on to have normal pregnancies, to have more children free of complications. They, and the kids they had after the partial birth abortions would not be here today, if not for that proceedure.
That was just in WNY...imagine what the true number of this life saving proceedure really is, nation wide.
Abortion is always regrettable. Whether the woman decides to undergo it for health concerns, the fact that the baby has been determined to either be soon miscarried, stillborn, or will die soona after birth due to deformity, because the pregnancy results from incest or rape (both of which happen in this country at an alarming rate), because the mother and father haven't the financial resources, or because of career concerns, it is the woman's decision to make.
I don't see the sense in a bunch of legislators an judges, of which only two or three are actually doctors (and are they ob/gyns-or MY personal dr? I don't think so), making what amounts to a blanket medical decision for me.
I really wish, though, that this was legislated law, and not based on a judicial decision.

[OP Mike]

Recently Obama and others have challenged men to recognize and live up to their legal and moral responsibility to provide financial support for their children. This is considered brave talk.

Why don't Obama and others have the same courage to challenge women to recognize and live up to their moral responsibility to bring to term the children they conceive?

[MS]

this issue is sooo BOOOOOOOOOOORING...not important anymore...

[OP Mike]

Boring? No way! The abortion business is exciting, creative and extremely profitable. Last year alone the business raked in over $13 billion. That's not exactly chump change. It even helped a common butcher like Dr. Barnett Slepian become a multimillionaire.

Also, it gives a numbskull like Hillary Clinton a cause she can champion forever. It lets girls and women shun the big R word - responsibility. And it provided a world-class jackass, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, with the outlet he needed for doing an extremely creative writing exercise.

Now what's so dull and boring about all that?

[Achai Kamau]

Nearly everyone has missed the point; this article is not about the legality of abortion. It is about forcing health care organizations (by leveraging federal funds) to agree to knowingly hire applicants unwilling to provide certain heath care services to patients in need. While I rarely condone abortion, I firmly believe that all patients should have equitable access to lawful medical services, including contraceptives, emergency contraception, and legal abortion.

Should my job security be protected by federal law because I refuse to print documents at work due to my conscientious objection to the destruction of forest resources, which endangers millions of impoverished people in Asia who will be most affected by global warming? Hopefully not. So what makes my beliefs and commitments any less important than that of pro-life employees? If you want to make a political statement, then resign or work for change; do not neglect your duties.

By the way "OP Mike," last I checked, it takes two to conceive. It might be easier to blame pregnancy on the female, but she is not the only one responsible.