New Rule Protects Doctors from Their Job, The Pill Could Be Abortion

Feministing's response, and a link to action at Planned Parenthood. And to screaming at that spineless bunch of patsies in Congress (who can't even protect the Constitution and balance of powers with a much needed impeachment.... so what do we really expect?)

I would like to know which doctors are being punished for not performing abortions. Where? When? I'm delighted that conscience will be protected. I also know that from time to time abortion is necessary to save a woman's life, and if my life were in the balance, I would want my ER doc to know how to do it and then to actually do it. Yes, doctors of conscience, any proceedure that would save my life is a matter of full medical competence. I am a human, whether you like it or not.

But back to this question of conscience. Now, when a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy, she has also consulted her conscience. When a man joins the KKK he has also consulted his conscience. So, let's try this on for size, a little test by analogy.

(Note that I am fully aware that this 'protection' is limited to matters of medical termination of a pregnancy. However, that limitation is in no way acceptable, even on its face. At least if what is really at stake here is principle, which it isn't. But, Pandagon's read makes my analogy the stronger.)

So, I ask you to consider this scenario: A member of the KKK is seriously injured at a rally. Without proper medical care, his life will be forever altered physically, emotionally, and economically. His actual breathing life is, however, not threatened. The emergency staff in the ER tasked with his care are a mix African Americans , Caucasians, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asian and South Asian Americans, all of whom just happen, on that shift, to be morally opposed to the ideology, action and choices of the KKK. They refuse to treat the clansman on grounds of these moral objections as his condition is a direct result of his choices. KKK-boy is SOL.

WTF is OK w/ u re: this?

The difference here is that pregnancy can and often is the result of an accident, a mistake, a misjudgment, or (worse) a violation. It is often as unwilled as an injury. Joining the KKK is voluntary and intentional all the way down the line. The really big difference here, the key difference, is that becoming pregnant is never (on the woman's part) a vicious act. Neither, for that matter, is choosing to abort. There is no woman, rubbing her hands together, thinking, "Alright! I'm gonna abort this baby!" There are white supremacists, however, who do rub their hands in glee at the prospect of a rally or a chance do some harm to their supposed inferiors. That's part of being a racist fuckwit, all that totally ineffectual glee.

The Hippocratic oath does, in deed and in fact, trump personal morality. If not, medical care could be provided at the pleasure of the provider. Hippocrates realized this, waaaaaay back in the day, and said as much. He knew that without doctors sworn to this morality, one that trumps clan, city-state, ideology, even personal choice (because these people were hardcore): people would be let to suffer, be left maimed, and die -- because of the preferences of the physician.

Which, for the last 2400 years, give or take, has been considered totally unacceptable in civilized society. Which, for the last EVER, has been one of the hallmarks of civilization.

Don't want to perform an abortion, Doc? OK. That's totally hunky-dory. Work in a medical field in which you will not be asked to. Think thoracic, geriatric, genetic, do brain surgery. Whatever. What in hell is so hard about that? Seriously.

The real stakes here are not the fabulated cognitive dissonance between the Hipporactic oath and a woman's right to choose. The real stakes here are in the current, totally unpredictable, election. And congrats McBush Co, LLC: abortion just went back on the debate agenda. Which is what's at stake here is motivating that little bitty base that wants to rule unopposed in its comfy theocracy. The base that does not grant the rights of others to their Constitutionally protected creed. -- You're worried they won't turn out for your patsy. Aren't ya?

So, it's not the 1950s, or 1890s, or even the Middle Ages you find attractive, but a Greece pre-Socrates, a Greece pre-democracy. The Greece of the Iliad, the Odyssey. I mean, this works analogically with both your social and economic policy, and your domestic policy come to maunder that. It is also, I would just like to point out, and like the 600-odd commandments of the Torah from which you cherry pick your morality, a PRE-CHRISTIAN Greece to which you would take us.

Good luck surviving there, fellas, in that old world or its present incarnations.

You, no, you do not have the chop for that. This move right here proves that much.

And it gets better, people. HHS tries to draft rules that define contraception as abortion. Feminist Majority has the scoop there, and the petition.

On their way out, McBush Co., LLC are going to try very hard to get the rest of their misogynist agenda through. Stay awake.