Discrimination against which party?
The old “human right” switcheroo:
When Roger Severino tells his story, discrimination is at its heart.
“I did experience discrimination as a child. And that leaves a lasting impression,” he tells me.
Severino directs the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. When I meet with him at his office in the shadow of the Capitol, he talks about his childhood as the son of Colombian immigrants growing up in Los Angeles.
“I remember a white kid coming up, as I was in the pool, [who] said a racial epithet,” Severino recalls. “My response as a kid was — I was confused, in a way. Why would they say such a thing?”
In high school he was steered toward vocational training but he said no thank you, honors classes for me, and on he went to Harvard Law.
But now he’s using civil rights talk as a screen for imposing conservative Catholic dogma on all of us.
Severino — a devout Catholic and political conservative — has put the right to religious freedom front and center in his fight against discrimination in health care.
In public appearances he refers to religious freedom as “the first freedom.” Since coming to HHS he has issued a rule that allows employers to refuse to cover birth control as part of their employee health insurance plans, if employers have a religious or moral objection to contraception.
Rights can be in tension with each other, of course. Rights to equal treatment are in tension with “rights” to treat people unequally. That’s what’s going on here: Severino wants to create and protect a “right” to deny people medical treatment on religious grounds.
And earlier this year he created an entirely new division within the civil rights office — the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom. Its mission, he says, is to ensure that health care workers and health care companies, are never forced to participate in particular medical services — such as abortion, assisted suicide or gender reassignment surgery — if they object.
…
Just a few weeks after he started at HHS, Severino met with representatives from several different advocacy groups — including Judith Lichtman, senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families.
She says Severino billed the meeting with about 20 people as a “listening session.”
“He opened the meeting telling us his heartfelt story about knowing and understanding discrimination,” she says. “And, frankly, stories will get you just so far.”
Because he was “listening,” Lichtman says, Severino declined to answer questions about his own positions on specific issues. But she believes his actions since then — including creating the religious freedom office — point to a desire to limit women’s access to reproductive health services.
“Abortion is a legal health care service in this country,” Lichtman says. “And if, indeed, what Mr. Severino is intending to do is to undermine protections for women who are seeking a legal health care service, I’d say that’s pretty abhorrent.”
Well, maybe abortion won’t be a legal health care service for much longer. Problem solved?
What about the right of health care workers and health care companies who object to performing a perfectly legal procedure not to be health care workers, but to be in some field where they are not required to perform something they find odious?
I have to perform duties I do not like, and sometimes do not agree with, because they are part of my job. I can work to change that part of my job, I can just do it and shut up, or I can find another job that does not require me to do those things. Of course, at a new job, there would likely be other things I did not agree with that I would have to do, and they might be things that I couldn’t work to change, and would find worse to have to do than where I am. We weigh these decisions all the time, but the one duty I will not perform is one that requires me to violate someone else’s rights.
The problem there is that anti-abortion fanatics have convinced themselves that pregnancies are persons and so abortions violate the rights of the pregnancies. They’re wrong, but obviously it’s a very tall steep mountain convincing them of that.
Here’s what I’d like to ask Mr. Severino: Is he OK with a hypothetical Christian Scientist pharmacist who refuses to fill prescriptions for antibiotics because he does not believe in “material medicine”?
Surely this person has the same rights as a Catholic or Protestant fundamentalist pharmacist. And refusing to hire him because of his religious beliefs would be blatant religious discrimination.
I’m actually fine with granting them that emryos are people if they want, because no person has any right to e.g. a blood transfusion lasting nine months even if their life depends on it.
No, because that would make the abortion issue a very different thing. If conception really did cause a tiny tiny tiny infant to pop into being instantly, that would be harder to argue.
What would be harder to argue? There is zero right to life support from another human being no matter how close to death you are.
And that’s for true, real, unequivocal persons.
Nobody can be hauled off the street, blood-typed, and forced onto a dialysis machine to clean someone else’s blood. Even if that means someone dies for lack of dialysis.
It’s only when women are the only people affected that suddenly that fundamental right is suspended.
So why do you say it’s harder to argue? Why is it women, and only women, can be used that way? (I’m not being sarcastic. Real question. If there’s a real argument along those lines, I need to know!)
quixote, where your argument would fall flat with the religious is that they consider a woman having sex as an invitation to pregnancy. If she willingly has sex and becomes pregnant then she is seen to have invited the pregnancy and so giving the foetus life-support is her duty. In their minds, it’s no different than putting a person with a treatable illness or condition into an induced coma and on a life-support machine then wanting to pull the plug because you’ve decided that you don’t want that person to live anymore, even though that person would recover.
I’m not saying it’s right (it’s not) but that’s how some people do what passes for them as thinking.
So, when the police departments in Hilldale AZ (or New Vrindaban TN) refuse to enforce the law against the local cult, they get a pass…cuz Freedum?
Why it’s harder: because the fanatics insist (fanatically) that the pregnancy is a person as opposed to a process. They’re wrong on the facts. If they were right, we would be stuck arguing that it’s ok to kill a person. I promise I’m familiar with the argument that even a person doesn’t have a right to suck anyone’s blood (I’ve read the JJT classic), but personhood would still be an extra level to deal with (and abortion itself would be more traumatic).
I see. Relieved that I haven’t actually missed anything. The point you’re making is that the inescapable argument from rights annoys the religious too much. I can see where, as a matter of practical politics, there could be situations when it accomplishes more not to shout about that.
But I think we, meaning people who think human rights are important, make a real mistake descending to practical politics too fast and not starting out from principles. Before you know it, all the abortion providers in Mississippi are shut and you’re facing 15-week abortion bans. We’ve (meaning society in general) let them pretend it’s about life instead of controlling women because otherwise the religious would get cross. That’s where the practicality of the damned always gets you.
Another major example is the conceptualization of sexuality. Racism is now understood in polite society as Bad. Race is something you’re born with. So all other characteristics people would like to have covered by equal rights have to be genetic. Otherwise the religious could pretend you have a choice. I’m convinced it was a major mistake to let them pretend that some kinds of (consensual, non-harmful, adult) sexualities are bad. That they’re tolerable only if you can’t help yourself. No. Just no. It is nobody’s business what kind of (usual caveats) sex other people are having. It does not matter whether it’s genetic or a choice. You have a right (there’s that word again) to have whatever kind of sex (repeat caveats) you want.
Instead, because genetics snuck in as the only “good” justification, we’re (meaning some people) now in the ridiculous position of insisting a desire to wear eyeliner is genetic but having a penis is irrelevant.
Rights matter. (I know I’m preaching to the choir. I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s genetic?)
@quixote: I suspect you’re tilting at mind wills. ;-) Not necessarily genetic.