By eliminating the enforcement of these legal protections, the Obama Administration is signaling that it intends to ignore the law and refuse to protect the civil liberties of healthcare professionals based upon religious or moral conscience. Without enforcement, healthcare personnel will have scant legal recourse for intimidation and bigotry rendering the laws intended to protect them meaningless.
Intimidation? Bigotry? Sounds sinister.
But there are two sides to every story. Here's the skinny (opens PDF) on the shrub's scheme to let fundie morons throw a monkey wrench not only into abortion, but into the most basic contraceptive services:
For example, the Church Amendments prohibit "discrimination" against health care professionals who refuse to perform or assist in the performance of abortion services. The draft regulations define "assist in the performance" broadly to include individuals with only a tangential connection to the procedure. For example, the draft regulations specifically permit an employee whose job it is to clean medical instruments to refuse to clean instruments used to insert an IUD.
…
The draft regulation could force Title X providers to hire employees who will refuse to do their job. Depending on how the Department interprets this regulation, Title X recipients may be required to certify that they will agree to hire staff who refuse to provide contraception, receptionists who refuse to make appointments for contraceptive patients, and counselors who refuse to provide patients with information about contraception.
That's about like the government telling an airline, "We'll subsidize you, but only if you hire pilots that are so afraid of flying that they refuse to take off with the plane." That's the kind of thing Obama rightly refuses to enforce.
So mystics want to be hired for medical jobs, paid for doing only part of their work, and if their superstitions prohibit them from doing some other part of their work, firing them is "discrimination," "intimidation," and "bigotry." Let me tell what "discrimination," "intimidation," and "bigotry" really is. It's initiating the use of force against women and doctors who refuse to accept the assertion that globs of cells are human beings just because an evil spirit allegedly told you so.
In a completely capitalist and fully free country, mystics would of course be free to play witch doctor as long as they don't deceive their patients as to the brand of "medicine" they offer. And fundie patients like Christian "Scientists" would be free to seek no medical attention, but the attention of their imaginary friend, and consequently go meet him early.
In today's collectivist, politicized world, however, fundies elect shrubs and Palins to hijack political power to initiate the use of force against women and doctors who refuse to accept the assertion that globs of cells are human beings. Now, voters turned tables and the fundies are on the receiving end of political power: It's payback time.
And what a harmless payback it is. Unlike the fundies, who would incarcerate women and doctors for "murdering" insentient globs of cells, Obama merely refuses to hand out government monies to witch doctors that pose as scientists and then refuse to do their work.
The chilling effect of the Obama administration forcing doctors and nurses to choose between their losing their careers and being compelled to participate in abortions against their moral and religious belief is incalculable. Not only will pro-life doctors and nurses be driven from the professions,
I've got news for you: If you base your "work" not on science, but on faith, you're not a scientist, you're not a doctor, you're a mystic and a witch doctor. If you take tax money for doctoring, but only witch doctor, that's called fraud.
If you want tax money, doctor as the government tells you to. If your superstition prohibits you from doctoring right, find some private payers and donors with matching superstitions.
…but patients will lose the ability to choose doctors who reflect their own religious and moral convictions, doctors who now help them to make healthcare choices based upon them.
That's of course nothing like what you'd do, you little fundie rascal: Your and shrubby's laws made sure patients lose the ability to choose doctors who reflect their own reasonable and moral convictions. Only under your rule, the deck was stacked against those seeking freedom from globs. Now you complain it may get stacked against the glob worshippers.
Efforts to roll back freedom of conscience protections are only the latest in a series of aggressive actions that demonstrate intolerance for those whose conscience is convicted in support of a culture of life:
So using lethal force against living women and doctors on behalf of nonhuman, nonliving appendages to female bodies that might some day become human life is a "culture of life"? You could much rather call capital punishment for murderers a "culture of life": At least then the lethal force is used in retaliation for real murders. You could much rather call shooting yourself in the head a "culture of life," because it saves countless cows that won't go into the burgers you can't eat anymore as you're dead.
In the first month of his presidency, Obama reversed the established Mexico City policy that kept taxpayer money from being used by international organizations for abortions as a method of family planning protecting millions of American from paying for a procedure that they find morally objectionable.
How about finding a way to protect pacifists from paying for defense spending? How about finding a way to protect the childless from paying for schools? How about abolishing taxes altogether?
Last week, the President unilaterally lifted embryonic-stem-cell research restrictions.
In the President's recent healthcare summit, groups that support abortion were invited but pro-life groups with a stake in healthcare were excluded.
Obama's making all the right moves now to get into my heart.
The fact is, there are doctors and nurses who have no moral objection to abortion. Why then, should some medical professionals be compelled to do something that compromises their conscience? It is one thing to hold fast to the pro-abortion position as a matter of a personal opinion, it is quite another to force someone else to compromise their moral integrity.
They should be compelled to do so because they're being paid for it, you lying fundie moron. If those witch doctors base their integrity on their superstitions, they ought to quit government-funded hospitals and go play doctor at church-funded hospitals that should not be able to and under Obama will not be able to get tax dollars.
Having no reason to believe that President Obama will not fulfill this radical campaign pledge, some Catholic bishops are talking openly about engaging in civil disobedience to protect Catholic hospitals and their doctors from being forced to perform abortions.
Jail them just as the fundies would jail women and doctors! Jail them all! Payback time!
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