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Gatekeeper
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United States of America
Feb 2000
time: 23:23
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Everyone:
Read this article, which I found while perusing the raw news wires at work, and see why you (assuming you're a male) will, too, thank God you're not a woman.
Any bolding throughout the article is mine. Without further ado:
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quote:
Anti-Abortion Activists Broaden Efforts
By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
NEW YORK In Congress and states nationwide, anti-abortion activists are broadening efforts to support hospitals, doctors and pharmacists who citing moral grounds want to opt out of services linked to abortion and emergency contraception.
A little-noticed provision cleared the House of Representatives last week that would prohibit local, state or federal authorities from requiring any institution or health care professional to provide abortions, pay for them, or make abortion-related referrals, even in cases of rape or medical emergency.
In Mississippi, a bill became law in July that admirers and critics consider the nation's most sweeping "conscience clause." It allows all types of health care workers and facilities to refuse performing virtually any service they object to on moral or religious grounds.
And in states across the country, anti-abortion organizations and a group called Pharmacists for Life are encouraging pharmacists to refuse to distribute emergency contraceptives, which they consider a potential form of abortion.
"We've seen increasing organization and networking to get more pharmacists to refuse to provide EC not just in the Bible Belt but all over," said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It's part of the anti-choice arrogance in which they believe they have the right to impose their ideology on everyone else."
Karen Brauer, president of Pharmacists for Life, was fired by Kmart in 1996 for refusing to dispense a birth-control drug. She believes momentum now favors her movement.
"More people, including pharmacists, are becoming informed how certain drugs operate and those who want to avoid ending the life of a human being would avoid those drugs," she said.
Brauer, who lives in Lawrenceburg, Ind., and works at a drugstore in Ohio, hopes more states will emulate Mississippi, South Dakota and Arkansas by specifying that pharmacists, as well as doctors, have the right to withhold services on moral grounds. She does not believe there should be any obligation to refer rebuffed customers to another pharmacist who would fill their prescription.
"Forced referral is stupid," she said. "If we're not going to kill a human being, we're not going to help the customer go do it somewhere else."
At the federal level, abortion rights groups are alarmed by the provision that cleared the House last week, broadening protections for hospitals and insurers that seek to avoid any involvement with abortions. The provision would prevent government officials from using any coercive means such as a funding cutoff or permit denial to ensure abortion-related services are available.
Two years ago, the House passed a bill with the same goals, but it died in the Senate without a vote. Anti-abortion activists are pleased because the revived proposal was sent to the Senate as part of a broader appropriations bill and, at minimum, will go to a House-Senate conference committee.
Opponents say the provision's impact would be felt primarily by low-income women who depend on federally subsidized health care and use Roman Catholic hospitals. According to the critics, the measure would enable hospitals to refuse to provide abortions, or referrals, even if a pregnant woman had been raped or was in critical medical condition.
"That the U.S. Congress would be so callous as to add this kind of provision that affects only poor women in the most extreme circumstances is outrageous," said Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice.
Kissling said she was heartened by developments in some states such as a California Supreme Court ruling that Catholic Charities of Sacramento must provide birth control options in its employee health plan. "But for women in conservative states, that's no help," she said.
Mississippi's new law provides sweeping immunity for opting out of abortion and contraception services in a state where many women seeking abortions already travel to Alabama or Tennessee to obtain them. "We have doctors who won't even issue birth control prescriptions," said Nsombi Lambright of the American Civil Liberties Union's Mississippi branch. "It's not their job to impose their beliefs on others."
In contrast, anti-abortion health professionals say it is their beliefs that are embattled. Texas pharmacist Gene Herr, for example, was fired this year by the Eckerd drugstore chain after refusing to fill an emergency contraception prescription for a rape victim.
"They were forcing me to do something that I see is wrong," Herr said.
The American Medical Association and American Pharmacists Association support their members' right to conscientious refusal. However, the pharmacists' group says patients also have a right to obtain legally prescribed therapies.
Lourdes Rivera, who assists low-income patients as director of the Los Angeles-based National Health Law Program, worries that anti-abortion health providers are gaining too much leeway.
"Yes, we need to respect individual freedom of religion. But at what point does it cross the line of not providing essential medical care? At what point is it malpractice?" she asked. "If someone's beliefs interfere with practicing their profession, perhaps they should do something else."
On the Internet:
Pharmacists for Life: http://www.pfli.org
Planned Parenthood: http://www.plannedparenthood.org |
***
Where will it end? Who know. But I'm sorely tempted to take a lesson from this article, and you know what that is? Simple:
I'm sick and tired of being balanced and neutral in my job as a journalist. From this day forward, here and IRL, I intend to deliberately run news that only fits within *my* worldview, be it social policy, foreign affairs or, heck, anything else. Don't like it? Tough. I ain't gonna refer you to another news source. You suckers will just have to find it on your own, or, if I'm the only news source available, LIVE WITH IT.
Got it? Good.
Gatekeeper
P.S. Multiply me by the tens of thousands of journalists out there and you can bet your life you're going to have a helluva time finding any news that's real ... God, how I love this new, care-free way of doing my job. Twisting reality so that others have no way of telling what's real anymore is so, so, so EMPOWERING.
P.P.S. Now for requisite smiley:  I've got better things to do with my life than try to control and/or distort what information others have access to. Furthermore, I live by a professional and personal code of conduct that prevents me from taking advantage of the position I occupy in society. But if anti-abortion forces get their way on this issue well, thank God I'm not a woman. And who knows what profession may be next that allows every Tom, Dick and Harry to do as they personally please, regardless of responsibility to society at large.
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Gatekeeper
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United States of America
Feb 2000
time: 23:23
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I've always believed that in order to reduce abortion in a permanent manner, one must educate both men and women about sexuality. Abstinence is certainly a major part of that education after all, it's the only surefire way to avoid an unwanted pregnancy but so is knowing about STDs and where one can find contraceptives and, yes, emergency contraceptives if someone got carried away in the heat of passion. Also a part of that education is seeing the stages of pregnancy, from conception to childbirth, because that, I believe, further drives home the point of, well, the beauty that we're capable of creating.
As for journalists, always keep in mind that for every "big one" you see, pulling down the big bucks and having that "aura," there are 100 others who are in the trenches working their butts off with no public glory or adulation, and who make roughly $25,000 to $40,000 a year, have kids, and just want to do right by humanity. Then there are those who make even less, and work in far more dangerous conditions, bringing back the raw reports to those of us stateside, so to speak.
It's an old saying, but it's true: With power comes responsibility. It's something faced by journalists every day (and shoddy research by icons like Dan Rather don't help matters any for the "little folks" in journalism). The same holds true for pharmacists, nurses and doctors especially those who practice in rural areas who literally hold a woman's future in their hands. Where does one draw the line at personal ethics and professional conduct?
All I can do is feel sorry for a woman who finds herself in such a position. Particularly if she did everything right her partner had protection, she used birth control, etc. and *still* got pregnant, but found out soon enough to do something about it. I confess to having slightly less sympathy for the woman or man who had irresponsible sex.
I'm rambling. I need some shut-eye. This question has been with humanity since the dawn of sentience, and I doubt it's going to go away anytime soon. Yet that does nothing to shake my belief that, in the end, it's up to the woman (and man, if he so chooses to be involved) to decide whether or not parenthood is for her/them. And hope that they're not in the situation they're in due to irresponsibility.
**sigh**
Gatekeeper
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Ben Kenobi
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McGregornobi!
Oct 2002
time: 21:23
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quote:
I've always believed that in order to reduce abortion in a permanent manner, one must educate both men and women about sexuality. Abstinence is certainly a major part of that education after all, it's the only surefire way to avoid an unwanted pregnancy but so is knowing about STDs and where one can find contraceptives and, yes, emergency contraceptives if someone got carried away in the heat of passion.
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True, if these emergency contraceptives were actually contraceptive, then you would have an argument. However, they are all abortifacients that just change the date when the abortion happens to earlier in the term.
If responsible condom use, and education worked, then there would be no need for emergency 'contraception.' The fact that such a last resort has become popular is an indication of the failure in our current methods of health education. It's no different from abortion as a means of birth control.
quote:
It's an old saying, but it's true: With power comes responsibility. It's something faced by journalists every day (and shoddy research by icons like Dan Rather don't help matters any for the "little folks" in journalism). The same holds true for pharmacists, nurses and doctors especially those who practice in rural areas who literally hold a woman's future in their hands. Where does one draw the line at personal ethics and professional conduct?
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You are dealing with more than one person, Gatekeeper. Why should the physician, and the pharmacist and the nurse be concerned only for the life of the mother, and neglect the child growing inside of her.
As it is, they have a responsibility to both, and they are right to refuse treatment that kills a person.
quote:
All I can do is feel sorry for a woman who finds herself in such a position. Particularly if she did everything right her partner had protection, she used birth control, etc. and *still* got pregnant,
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That's the problem with condoms, and why abstinence needs to play a more prominent role. If people understood that even if they do everything right, they can still get pregnant, then they will be less likely to engage in the behavior in the first place.
Rather than being shocked, it would be better to show them how to avoid this whole situation in the first place.
quote:
it's up to the woman (and man, if he so chooses to be involved) to decide whether or not parenthood is for her/them.
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Hold on a minute. Why should the woman be the only one to have a say? If we hold men up to their responsibility to take care of the children they conceive, then we can avoid many of the problems that come afterwards.
It's not fair to burden everything on the women, when the responsibility should be shared.
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Drogue
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Omnipresent conscience
Oct 2002
time: 05:23
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quote:
Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
quote:
A doctor not acting when someone is dying is called negligence, in most places. |
Killing a living person is also called murder, in most cases. |
Not to save the person with the highest chance of survival. That is common practice. Generally, if the mother dies, the foetus has little chance. Given the choice to save one, you save the most viable one, which in almost all cases will be the mother, especially given that at that stage, the foetus is rarely viable.
Letting both die, or killing the one with the highest (and often only, at that stage, given complications) chance of survival, is negligence. Just wait until there's a civil suit of a doctor refusing to operate to save the life of the mother.
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Whaleboy
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Please make all cheques payable to Whaleboy
Jan 2003
time: 05:23
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I'll spare my own opinions here, but give a framework for deciding a given view.
There is a difference between a living human lifeform, a human being and a human person.
Lifeform is to be understood in the purely biological sense: living cells. A being is a being to others, traditionally that would rest upon the ability to communicate, though some might say the ability to be perceived and thus qualities of being ascribed by others upon one - sentience. A "person" is not dependent upon biology, it is someone with a consciousness that they know, a being unto oneself in the existential sense. The definition is an extention of Descartes famous "Cogito ergo Sum".
Sentience is insufficient to be a "person", just as biology is insufficient to be described as "being". Where one leads to the other is up for debate, furthermore, one needs to define murder as the killing of a "person" (which all will surely agree on), or also the killing of a "being". Work out where your definitions therein lie in a consistent manner and you shall find your position on abortion.
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16-09-2004 12:17
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