Provider 'Conscience' Rule Is Bush Administration's Latest Attack On Reproductive Health, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Sexual Health / STDs;  Primary Care / General Practice
Article Date: 14 Jan 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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The "real target" of the Bush administration's HHS provider "conscience" rule is reproductive health care, which has been "the whipping girl of the Bush administration for the past eight years," columnist Sally Kalson writes in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette opinion piece, adding that the regulation is Bush's "parting sop to the religious right as he leaves the White House." Under the rule, "anyone along the chain of care from a secretary or clerk to nurse, doctor or pharmacist" would be "permitted to mislead or misinform women of the options legally available to them," Kalson writes. She continues, "And so we see one more time that health care no longer exists for the welfare of the patients. Now it's for the comfort of the providers." She writes, "This is just one more interest group taking precedence over those seeking care." Although President-elect Barack Obama "[n]o doubt will move to undo" the rule, "that could take months, and a lot of mischief can occur in the interim," according to Kalson. She continues, "The new rule is a solution in search of an injustice. Apparently, the dispensing of condoms, the morning-after pill and the like has exacted a tragic toll on health care workers who've been forced to actually do their jobs."

Kalson notes that a "host of critics" -- including the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the American Nurses Association -- have criticized the rule as "unnecessary, overly broad, confusing, irresponsible, a barrier to care, and as has been the case with so much Bush policy, fantasy-based." She continues, "To that list, I would add misogynist." Kalson writes, "The truth is, no one knows how people will interpret [the rule's] vague guidelines, and that means a litigation boom is bound to follow." She concludes, "And while it's very nice of the outgoing administration to create a new sub-specialty for the legal profession, it would be so much better if they dropped this rule where it belongs on their way out the door -- in the trash heap of misogynist history" (Kalson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1/11).

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