Anger Over Draft HHS Bill

The pendulum has swung so far to the side of abortion as a woman's right, that the rights of the yet-to-be-born are hardly considered. Anger now focuses on a Health and Human Services Depratment draft that would permit health professionals morally opposed to abortion to opt out of performing the procedure. Though many health professionals object on religious grounds, others object on ethical grounds that are hardly religious. That hasn't stopped Marie Cocco from claiming that there is a great Bush-Religious Right Conspiracy. You can read her article here. An excerpt follows:

This parting gift to the religious right comes in a proposed rule by the Health and Human Services Department, which says it is merely revising existing federal rules that allow health-care personnel to opt out of performing an abortion if they have a moral or religious objection to the procedure.

From that minimalist and unobjectionable clause, a monster grows.

The draft regulation would redefine abortion to include ''any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.''

The right wing has failed to win approval of a ''human life'' amendment to the Constitution that would declare that life begins at conception. It has failed to get even conservative-leaning courts to go along with the most extreme elements of its anti-abortion agenda.

It failed to block approval of the RU-486 pill that produces a medical abortion. It failed to block government approval of emergency contraception — the ''morning after'' pill long promoted by the medical profession — which is taken whether or not a woman even knows she is pregnant.
Seven years ago, when the first Bush administration budget included language that would drop a requirement that federal workers' health insurance plans offer contraception if the plan includes coverage of prescription drugs, a bipartisan storm extinguished the idea.

And so, having failed to keep American women from having access to basic birth control, the right is trying to use the guise of an existing ''conscience'' requirement to achieve what it cannot accomplish through an open political process.

Source: Akron Beacon Journal