Whatever your conscience tells you must be right
How do Bush’s exciting new ‘conscience’ rules work, anyway? What exactly do they rule in, and out? Are there any limits? I haven’t seen any mentioned in the news coverage so far.
Well I suppose I’ll just have to look at the rules themselves – though not all 132 pages of them if I can help it. But judging by the Health and Human Services page on the subject, they haven’t ruled anything out. It’s just a matter of ‘conscience’ and ‘personal beliefs.’ So no matter what damn fool thing you believe, you have the ‘right’ to deny medical services to anyone and everyone as long as you announce that it’s a matter of your conscience. Worse than that, no matter what cruel unjust misogynist bigoted damn fool thing you believe, you have the same right.
How stupid is the Bush administration, exactly? What is going to prevent ‘devout’ Muslims from refusing to treat members of the opposite sex? Or refusing to treat women who are not wearing hijab? Or refusing to treat Jews? What is going to prevent ultra-Orthodox Jews from refusing to treat members of the opposite sex? What is going to prevent ‘devout’ Christians from refusing to treat homosexuals?
It doesn’t look as if that has even crossed their minds, but why wouldn’t it have? Do they think people inside American borders don’t act that way? But even if they were right about that – does it not occur to them that issuing what amounts to an open and warm invitation to act exactly that way might encourage people to do so? Does it not occur to them that ‘conscience’ can cover a lot of territory and that not all of it is anodyne? Does it not occur to them that even they might find a real theocracy a little uncomfortable to live in?
Did you notice when the regulations come into force? 19 January 2009! One day before the inauguration! Just under the wire!
I cannot see anything that would prevent health care providers from refusing treatment for any of the examples that you mention. Reference, in the longer document itself to what are called “civil rights violations of provider conscience”, is ominous. That means that a person has a civil right to refuse treatment on any of any possible number of conscience grounds, since there are no clear delimitations within the document. The actual regulations seem to focus on abortion, but the one page summary speaks of ‘services such as abortion, and the regulations themselves do not define the term ‘health service’, and hold it to be self-evident. So there seems no way to limit the grounds for refusal of service on the basis the civil rights of provider conscience (which in itself is a strange concept). And, according to the longer document, which goes on and on and on, regulations would govern 571,947 health care entities. So this is not a minor consideration.
Yes I damn well did notice that January 19th. Bastards.
Thank you for looking at the longer document. Services ‘such as abortion’ – yeah that sure clears things up.
The ‘civil rights of provider conscience’ is right up there with the ‘civil rights of lunchcounter conscience’ and the ‘civil rights of front of bus rider conscience’ and other bullshit like that there. It’s a brazen outrageous inversion of the term. Bastards.
This aspect of American politics is obscure to me. Cannot what is implemented by Bush (it sounds like “orders-in-council” to a Canuck) be repudiate by Obama?
Yes but not easily or quickly – not with a stroke of the pen. It’s obscure to me too (I don’t usually study the minutiae of how presidential rulings work) but the articles always explain this. Yes Obama can reverse but not instantaneously with a simple executive order, which is why the Bushies are doing it the way they are doing it.
So if I’m a doctor or pharmacist and I claim that my Goddess tells me that I shouldn’t treat men with testicular cancer, because that is the Goddess’s way of righting the balance between men and women and punishing men for their crimes, can I get away with this?
I doubt it. “Conscience” in this context is like “culture”, it’s code for kicking women around.
Yes, Janavir, this is code for kicking women around.
The NYT has a brief but trenchant article about this in the current edition. A Parting Shot at Women’s Rights