Abortion Advocates Continue Bashing Bush Administration Over Pro-Life Docs
RSS Newsfeed 
Email article
Printer friendly
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 31, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Abortion advocates continue trashing the Bush administration over a proposal that would offer protection from discrimination for pro-life doctors and medical professionals. The idea is to prevent them from facing employment issues if they refuse to participate in abortions.
The measure would also protect doctors and nurses who don’t want to give out drugs that can cause abortions and it would protect medical centers that don’t want abortions done on site.
Although the proposal simply ramps up enforcement of current federal laws, abortions advocates are up in arms and claim the measure would re-define contraception and birth control as abortion drugs.
To hear NARAL president Nancy Keenan tell it, the Bush administration is preventing women from getting birth control, although the proposal does no such thing.
"In its last months in office, the Bush administration is proposing new rules that could discourage doctors and health-care companies from providing birth control to women who need it," Keenan said Thursday in an email to her group’s supporters.
"The regulation blurs the distinction between abortion and birth control and could even threaten good state laws that protect women’s access to contraception," she claims.
Susan F. Wood, an abortion activist who resigned from the FDA over its delay in approving the Plan B morning after pill, also complained about the proposal in comments to the Washington Post.
"They are manipulating the system by manipulating the definition of the word abortion," she contended. "It’s another example of this administration’s disregard for science and medicine in how agencies make decisions."
However, the abortion definition is very clear — saying that any drug or procedure that ends the life of an unborn child after the point of conception is an abortion.
The proposed HHS rules define abortion as “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”
Abortion advocates have a problem with the implantation wording because the morning after pill can cause an abortion in some instances of an unborn children between the points of fertilization and implantation.
As a result, the drug is abortifacient in some circumstances and abortion activists would rather have the public believe Plan B is a non-abortion birth control pill that only works to prevent pregnancy not destroy a human life.
Under the plan, the Bush administration wants to make sure hospitals and other medical facilities that receive federal funding follow federal laws and guarantee they will not refuse to hire medical staff who refuse to participate in abortions.
The facilities would be required to sign written certifications as a prerequisite for receiving the federal funds.
The Health and Human Services Department issued a statement responding to the criticism.
"Over the past three decades, Congress has passed several anti-discrimination laws to protect institutional and individual health care providers participating in federal programs," the department said. "HHS has an obligation to enforce these laws and is exploring a number of options."
Sign Up for Free Pro-Life News From LifeNews.com
Daily Pro-Life News Report Twice-Weekly Pro-Life
News Report Receive a free daily email report from LifeNews.com with the latest pro-life news stories on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here. Receive a free twice-weekly email report with the latest pro-life news headlines on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here.
