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Great post, but one small correction. The porposed rule no longer deals with birth control or contraception.

As LifeNews.com reported in August ( see http://www.lifenews.com/nat4112.html ) the measur eonly deals with consciecne rights for medical facilities and professionals.

As such, the measure revokes federal funding from any state or local government or facilities that makes medical centers or staff be involved in abortions.

The rule is a great proposal that, as you say, enforces exisitng laws protecting conscience rights. Anyone who is opposes to forced abortions should support this Bush administration rule.

Since they oppose it, we know for sure that Planned Parenthood and their friends aren't really pro-choice, but pro-abortion.

The second to last paragraph could use some explanation (I found it baffling on the first read). Here's some more context from the NY Times article:

Pharmacies said the rule would allow their employees to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives and could “lead to Medicaid patients being turned away.” State officials said the rule could void state laws that require insurance plans to cover contraceptives and require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims.

The Ohio Health Department said the rule “could force family planning providers to hire employees who may refuse to do their jobs” — a concern echoed by Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America....

As an example of the policies to which they object, Bush administration officials cited a Connecticut law that generally requires hospitals to provide rape victims with timely access to and information about emergency contraception.

I wouldn't call the activities involved "care," or at least not "medical care." We physicians don't refuse care, but sometimes we disagree on what is medical care and what is not.

The EEOC's statement is ridiculous, especially in light of the recent debate about the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist's Ethics Statement #385 requiring member physicians to provide abortion, practice in close proximity to an abortionist, and/or make prior arrangements with an abortionist. In practice, all physicians who provide health care to women, including Family Physicians, Internists and Pediatricians, are held to the ACOG standards.

For those physicians and other medical professionals who are employed, the regulation will merely underscore and clarify protections. For those of us who are self-employed but subject to Boards and ethics statements like that of ACOG, the new regulation will provide protection from new pressures to act against our consciences.

Beverly B. Nuckols, MD, MA (Ethics)

Texas

If a Medical Doctor prescribes Estrogen to woman for medical purposes, other than contraception, and the pharmacy refuses to fill the prescription, then the patient becomes ill, or dies, is the pharmacy liable?

CNN described this as some doctors and pharmacists wanting to play judge regarding a woman's reproductive rights.

Call Jeremiah Wright and get his Christian support and teaching/position on this. After all, he was Obama's spiritual director for over 20 years. Wright is hellbent on exposing our nation's planned, systematic "genocide" of our African-American brothers and sisters, and so, he must have an "unashamed" position on this, too. It should be interesting.

Though there might be a little vagueness (judging on the comments), this seems like a good development, especially in light of Obama's convictions on abortion and statement before the election that he would revoke conscience protections.

"Forced" abortions? While a woman may feel that society leaves her little option but to have an abortion, or live her life, with her child, in dead end poverty, nobody is forcing a woman to have an abortion in this country. That would obviously be illegal coercion, assault and false imprisonment.

Or did you mean "forced" abortion as being not an "unforced" abortion, a miscarriage?

Having been raised a Methodist, which supports abortion rights, my belief is that the morality of having or performing an abortion becomes more complex, a growing burden of responsibility, with the advancement of the pregnancy.

I don't see people having medical procedures lightly, even fairly minor cosmetic procedures. I've had two failed ones of those.) There is distress of some sort, to some degree; there is a need to resolve that distress, if one can. Difficult decisions are what we pay for living.

Emergency contraception isn't an abortion to me, but if it were, it's far less morally complex, in most circumstances that I can think of, than a later term abortion. Putting impediments to early as possible abortions is more likely immoral to me, than having or performing an early as possible abortion.

As a Vietnam era veteran, when there was a draft (I volunteered rather than be drafted), I certainly didn't have an American "right" to my life. What I demand is a respect for the dignity of the living, as much as possible. The Johnson and Nixon administrations didn't respect me, my fellow enlistees and draftees that way. Morale crashed, anomie grew, as our dignity and integrity was callously and dangerously abused.

A young woman is simply more "living" than an early in the pregnancy fetus, which becomes ever more "living" as the pregnancy advances. Until I can hold the baby in my arms, love it, sooth it, care for it, the mother is more important, more precious to me. When the baby is born, then it becomes just as important, just as precious, not less or more so.

Hard line anti-abortion activists, for that matter, many hard line activists in general, often seem to my skeptical eye to be remarkably incurious, Manichean (the oldest heresy, after all), lacking in, or blind to, intellectual integrity, and just plain calloused to the dignity of others.

Now lets say a doctor who believes in assisted suicide lets it be known in some subtle way. What if old uncle fred knows this and insists on being taken to this doctor knowing that the doctor will not try very hard to keep him alive because it goes against his conscience? Pretty soon all the elderly who want to die will be going to this doctor who can defend his actions on moral grounds.

Now lets say that there is a doctor who is not crazy about the police. A wounded officer is rushed to the hospital and the doctor refuses treatment on moral grounds.

Lets say that there is a Vietnamese or Iraqi doctor on the night shift at a major hospital, and some decorated veteran who has had his picture in the paper arrive for an emergency procedure with only minutes to live. The doctor refuses treatment on moral grounds.

Lets say that anyone who has had their picture in the paper or the court report is rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment with only minutes to live. The doctor in attendance has seen their picture in the paper or read the court report and refuses treatment on moral grounds.

Lets say a doctor is not very good, bottom of the class, drunk, whatever , and the patient dies. Can the doctor claim that their behaviour was actually the result of a moral decision so as to avoid a malpractice suit?

LETS THINK ABOUT THIS…………………

This is a fantastic parting gift from Pres. Bush. As a cardiologist and avid atheist, I have found myself in the difficult position of having to perform bypasses and other life saving procedures on christians and other religious patients for decades. Knowing that these procedures maintain more brain washed sheep in the world to push us backwards and make my own children's future dimmer, it's weighed on me heavily.

Prior to this legislation, I was unable to refuse treatment on a religious patient without jeopardizing my own career standing. Now I will be able to follow my heart and let nature run its course on patients who subscribe to ridiculous ideologies.

This is a ridiculous, superstitious decision. For nine years I worked as an RN in a maximum-security prison in Minnesota. I provided comprehensive, unbiased, complete, and professional health care to some of the worst people you can possibly imagine. When I provided colostomy care, insulin injections and wound care to the man who tortured, raped, and then murdered, by forcing his feces down her throat, a six year-old girl, do you think, as the father of six, that was easy for me to do? Anyone who cannot provide legal and medially indicated care to a patient or customer should get the hell out of health care, period.