An inconvenient conscience
CNSNews.com) - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said President Barack Obama supports existing federal laws that prevent federally funded health care providers from forcing doctors and pharmacists who morally oppose abortion from either performing the procedure or providing abortion-inducing medication.
But Obama opposes a regulation put into place by the Bush administration that would require those federally funded providers to certify compliance with the law, Sebelius said.
On March 10, the Obama administration submitted to the Federal Register a proposal to rescind the "conscience clause" rule entitled "Ensuring That Department of Health and Human Services Funds Do Not Support Coercive or Discriminatory Policies or Practices in Violation of Federal Law."
"There really hasn't been a change in status of what the president proposed," Sebelius told CNSNews.com during a conference call with reporters on Monday. "The president continues to support the underlying law.
"He felt the regulation issued in the final days of the Bush administration was overly broad and jeopardizes critical health services for women," she said. [reference]
First they argued that the newer additions from the Bush administration were not needed because existing laws covered it. Though they never explained why this set of guidelines need to be repealed if they are just duplicates. No reason to go through this whole thing of public comment and then repeal if this was so. They could be just left in place.
The key to what the Obama administration is really saying lies in "jeopardizes critical health services for women." They pretend to say that their will be no change in conscience protection while at the same time saying it jeopardizes health care services for women. Obviously to provide the level of so-called "women's health care" somebody has to have their conscience violated to do so - at least according to their action. Protection of conscience is just fine as long as it is a politically correct conscience. Otherwise you must bow down to the state and do their will in the name of "women's health care" which always means contraception and abortion.
I really find this whole thing despicable and even worse how little of an outcry relatively to this usurpation to the human conscience there is. Ironically it is often liberals who appeal to the protection of conscience even if it is an ill-formed one. But have a properly formed conscience that respects the actual dignity of humans being and God's plan for human sexuality and you have an inconvenient conscience that must be attacked into submission. God help us.
Plus there was this story yesterday
Although 30,000 of the approximately 49,000 comments on the National Institutes of Health's draft guidelines on human embryonic stem-cell research opposed any federal funding of such research, those responses were "deemed not responsive to the question put forth," according to the acting director of NIH.
"We did not ask them whether to fund such funding, but how it should be funded," said Dr. Raynard S. Kington in a telephone briefing with the media July 6.
But Richard M. Doerflinger, associate director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said it was "disingenuous (for Kington) to say that comments criticizing the guidelines overall were to be ignored." [reference]
We seek input that matches are pre-drawn conclusion.
Known as 
Dear NIH,
I suggest you fund the research by selling ice cream during snow storms, jalepeno cook books at GI ulcer clinics and ragweed bouquets at allergy clinics.
Get the hint?
Dear NIH,
I suggest you fund the research by selling ice cream during snow storms, jalepeno cook books at GI ulcer clinics and ragweed bouquets at allergy clinics.
Get the hint?
"The key to what the Obama administration is really saying lies in "jeopardizes critical health services for women.""
I'm starting to believe that the highest moral good in Obama's mind is for a woman's ability to procure an abortion no matter what reason or at what cost.
Mr. Obama needs to answer one simple question.
When no other medical provider is available, will a doctor be able to decline performing an abortion or will a pharmacist be able to decline prescribing an abortificient?
My guess is his answer would be "No." Of course, he would never answer that question directly.
Mr. H
http://www.allhands-ondeck.blogspot.com/
I find it truly odd and disturbing that this administration and some of its supporters seem to think that conscience is not a good enough reason for a physician to tailor his practice as he sees fit. For example, even if trained in it, a family physician can freely choose not to perform joint injections and other in-office procedures. He cannot be MADE to perform those procedures. Certainly many physicians don't write scripts for narcotics, either. And, this isn't because these procedures or drugs are BAD, they're just not within the scope of the physician's practice. And no one in their right mind would (or could) sue a doctor for NOT including those things in his practice, even if he were the only doc in town.
Be it for financial, ethical, or competence issues, physicians have always been able to dictate the scope of their practice. Heck, today I even heard a thoracic surgeon say, though he is trained and boarded for it, he no longer performs pediatric cardiac procedures because, even if he does a perfect surgery, when they occasionally die on the table, he feels like an assassin. This is a personal, moral and ethical decision on his part, fundamentally no different than a physician who, though trained and capable, refuses to either write for birth control & abortifaciens or perform abortions. Why is one acceptable and the other isn't?
Doctors have always been able to dictate their scope of practice, for good reasons. I fear we might be seeing a day when the state can force physicians and dictate the scope of their practice for them. First it will start with "choice" issues. Will it then move onto euthanasia? And, of course, with the possibilities of a nationalized payer system as a method of leveraging that change?
Dear NIH,
Stop being political and actually use science that works!
Sincerely angry
Sparks
Instead of hoping (duh) that Obama will change he mind and not put us to the test, why don't all physicians, all nurses, and all other health care providers in the United States who want to follow their consciences in these matters just stand up and said, "No!"
I am a Registered Nurse and I say, "No! No way! Not ever!"
I intend to send an e-mail message to the White House to this effect.
Next we will be forced to read furniture ads in Russian (oh, wait).
Typical Obama: say one thing and enforce the opposite.
And, if you disagree you're an intolerant bigot who is out to jeopradize critical women's hell-care!
Liberalism is a pathology.
Good one, Rock! I, too, finally had to know what enlightening words the bloggers from Russia were contributing to discussions. Imagine my surprise!