They say that all good things must end. So must some bad things, for instance, the Bush administration, fortunately.
But, while autumn leaves are falling, Bush and his accomplices still have their hands on the levers of power and are trying to limit a patient’s access to certain birth-control methods and techniques, including intrauterine devices, birth-control pills and emergency contraception. The administration is doing this on the grounds that they are protecting the consciences of health care providers, whose personal theistic frameworks might be a source of personal discomfort when providing medical and health services, methods, etc. which conflict with the ethos of such frameworks.
There are so many things wrong with this proposed rule that one hardly knows where to begin criticizing it. An obvious place might be that those who enter medicine more or less promise to provide care to a patient, provide access to services that the patient might need and put the patient’s well-being above personal reservations about what’s best spiritually.
A woman who gets accidentally pregnant should not be constrained in her options because her health care provider gets the heebie-jeebies when pondering the fate of a two-day-old ball of cells and decides not to provide the necessary care. It is medical professionals’ obligation to put their own moral dictates aside and, at the very least, provide the patient a referral to a provider who doesn’t share those convictions, restrictions or fictions. If you cannot do this, you should not be in health care.
The language in the rule is also so vague that it can be interpreted in all manner of ways, one such being that “other medical procedures” could be interpreted as extending to basic contraception, such as condoms and diaphragms and the aforementioned IUDs. Essentially, the rule could be used to deny patients access to any and all forms of birth control.
Suppose you had a fling over the weekend with someone with whom having a child was not exactly what you had in mind when the groove was on.
Monday morning you go to Student Health Services and ask the doctor, or whomever, for the emergency “morning after” pill and are told, sorry but the doctor’s religious/moral compass is pointing right at heaven. Dispensing this urgently requested pharmaceutical is going to make their compass go completely cattywampus and point to Hell, and they just don’t feel comfortable allowing you to not have an unwanted child.
Or suppose you’re playing XBox on Friday night with your buddies and thinking about that girl from chem lab who will be around later. Too bad you couldn’t pick up some condoms from SHS; they don’t dispense them anymore. You’re too embarrassed to go to the corner store to buy some, but you’re young and we all make mistakes and you’re gonna make one tonight.
Perhaps you lack sympathy for the college hook-up crowd. Imagine a situation where you go out for pizza with some guy and at some point get a Rohypnol-laced cocktail and he takes liberties with your personal bodily sovereignty and doesn’t wear a condom. Monday morning, still reeling in the aftermath of a serious personal crime, you’re left to keep your own counsel regarding options and possibilities for avoiding carrying the child of your attacker because the staff at your local health care provider’s office doesn’t agree with emergency contraception.
This rule represents yet another attempt by the Bush administration to legislate morality and to allow religious intolerance to drive policy. Now that Bristol Palin is pregnant, is it improper to suggest that teen pregnancy is something usually to be avoided? Access to contraception is the least we can do to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Maybe we could also offer people some compassion when they make mistakes and decide to put their development as adult members of society ahead of the fate of a couple of cells.
James Sewell