Posted on 12/29/2007 1:28:59 PM PST by big'ol_freeper
BOSTON, December 9, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a shocking turn-around, Massachusetts’s governor Mitt Romney announced yesterday that Roman Catholic and other private hospitals in the state will be forced to offer emergency contraception to sexual assault victims under new state legislation, regardless of the hospitals’ moral position on the issue.
The Republican governor had earlier defended the right of hospitals to avoid dispensing the “morning-after pill” on the grounds of moral dissent. The Boston Globe reported that Romney’s flip on the issue came after his legal counsel, Mark D. Nielsen, concluded Wednesday that the new law supersedes a preexisting statute related to the abortifacient pill.
The pill, a high dose of hormones, acts as an abortifacient by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall, thereby causing the death of the child.
The Department of Public Health issued a statement earlier in the week allowing hospitals to dissent from the new law, under a previous statute that protects private hospitals from being forced to provide abortion services or contraceptives.
Daniel Avila, associate director for policy and research for the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, said yesterday in an interview with the Boston Globe that Catholic hospitals still have legal grounds to avoid providing the pill, despite the new legislation. The new bill did not expressly repeal the original law protecting the rights of Catholic facilities.
“As long as that statute was left standing, I think those who want to rely on that statute for protection for what they’re doing have legal grounds.” (Boston Globe)
The Conference has been fighting this new legislation for several years. In 2003, in a statement to the Joint Committee on Health Care, they outlined their concern over the proposed Emergency Contraception Access Act (ECAA), stating: “It will force Catholic medical personnel to distribute contraceptives even in cases involving the risk of early abortion. It also furthers a national strategy ultimately directed towards coercing Catholic facilities to provide insurance coverage for, and to perform, abortions.”
The governor’s turnaround is especially unexpected since Romney has been presenting himself as a conservative on social issues in anticipation of a possible run for the presidency in 2008. This decision will certainly undermine the credibility of his conservatism with Republican Party members that may have been inclined to support him up to now.
“emergency contraception to sexual assault victims”
This is not RU486; it is not an abortion. It prevents pregnancy taken within 48 hrs of unprotected sex.
Yes I know and any form of contraception if contrary to Catholic belief. That was my point. Forcing them to provide that forces them to violate a belief of the faith. I would be like forcing Jews to cook and provide pork in a restaurant.  U.S. Army Retired |
The facts are two years old.
The misrepresentation of the facts was done by the person who posted the article, where he wrote “More proof of Romney support for the Culture of Death.”
Romney does not support the culture of death, and that claim misrepresents the facts that are found in the article, which clearly states that Romney vetoed the legislation, and then tried to protect the hospitals after the legislation was passed.
he only switched because his legal counsel told him he’d lose the case because the law required the hospitals to dispense the medication — NOT because he supported the “culture of death”.
So my statement was exactly accurate — a 2-year-old story was posted so the poster could misrepresent the facts.
I don’t know why he couldn’t just find a more recent story that he could misrepresent. :-)
Would it be more accurate then to say that Romney doesn’t take a stand against the Culture of Death... that he surrenders... he allows it to happen?
Like Pontius Pilate...
Boo Hoo.
Can you please tell how it prevents pregnancy within 48 hours?
There are levels of “stands” to take. Most of us have decided to stay with the legal responses, rather than illegal responses.
I would expect an elected official not to engage in civil disobedience. That’s for regular folks who have not sworn an oath to uphold the law.
But yes, the argument that people are making about Romney is that he did not take a sufficient stand against the morning-after pill in this case. Which itself is on the fringe of the fight for life, and something I don’t think many people would go to jail over.
I think vetoing the legislation and then trying to maintain the previous law’s restrictions when the new law specifically excluded that restriction was taking a stand.
If it hadn’t been so clear that the law required ruling against the hospitals, I’m certain the legislature would have simply passed a new law making it clear.
In fact, the fight in the courts probably not that the law has been interepreted incorrectly, but more likely a claim that the law itself is unconstitutional, violating the religious conscious of the hospital.
In this instance, I would have lobbied my representatives to allow the exception. But in general there is a valid point to be made for government requiring standard treatment. Imagine a hospital run by Jehovah’s Witnesses that refuses to provide blood transfusions for example. You wouldn’t want to be transported to that hospital.
In this case, if you were a woman who didn’t believe the morning-after pill was really an abortion pill, or a woman who believed in abortion, you would be upset if you were taken to a hospital that refused to give you the legal treatment you wanted, especially if it meant you had to go get a more serious abortion operation later.
So from the pro-life perspective, I think hospitals should be given an exception, but I understand why the legislature ruled as it did.
In fact, I imagine that even in states that eventually ban abortion, even if they ban abortion for rape, they will probably NOT ban the morning-after pill. In fact, it may be the pill that makes it possible to ban abortion for rape, something that right now is so politically hard that our best pro-life candidate (well, at least the man the National Right To Life has given their endorsement to) supports legal abortion for rape victims (which means he probably supports the morning-after pill for those cases as well, although he hasn’t written about it).
I'll use a pretty negative source, because it will be more to your liking than a more supportive site would be. This site will have a spin that is more negative than I think is justifiable, but it will answer your question.
The emergency contraceptive/morning-after pill has three possible ways in which it can work (as does the regular birth control pill):It is the 3rd option that is like an "abortion". However, whereas a normal abortion ejects the embryo from the uterus, in this case the embryo never gets implanted.
- Ovulation is inhibited, meaning the egg will not be released;
- The normal menstrual cycle is altered, delaying ovulation; or
- It can irritate the lining of the uterus so that if the first and second actions fail, and the woman does become pregnant, the human being created will die before he or she can actually attach to the lining of the uterus.
Normal birth control pills can also prevent implantation if they fail to stop fertilization. This is one reason why strict pro-lifers oppose birth control, and why pro-lifers who USE birth control will tend to NOT view plan b as an abortion agent.
Now for the real story:
Following exchanges of views in the London ‘Tablet’ during which a prominent Australian theologian expressed support for use of the “morning after pill” (see August ‘AD2000’), it is significant that the following article (here shortened) appeared in the Vatican’s official newspaper ‘L’Osservatore Romano.’ In her article, Maria Luisa Di Pietro, who teaches at the Institute of Bioethics, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, clarifies the Church’s opposition to use of the “morning after” pill.
The term “morning-after pill” indicates a series of preparations which are given to a woman after - but not more than 72 hours after (hence the name “morning-after”) - sexual intercourse that is presumed fertile. The effective action of “emergency contraception”, and hence of the “morning-after pill”, is abortifacient: in 80 per cent to 100 per cent of the cases the embryo is prevented from being implanted.
Those who say that the “morning-after pill” is not abortifacient, but prevents implantation, do not realise that they are affirming its abortifacient nature when they say that it prevents implantation: since this action can only take place after fertilisation and works by preventing the continued development of the embryo, it can only be abortifacient.
What has been said by those who maintain that preventing implantation is not abortifacient is denied moreover by E. Beaulieu, who, as the inventor of RU 486, otherwise known as the “abortion pill”, surely cannot be accused of religiously-motivated opinions: “Interruption of pregnancy after fertilisation can be regarded in the same way as abortion”.
Then there are those who, while recognising that the “morning-after pill” is abortifacient, call attention to the fact that in up to 20 per cent of the cases it might also act as a contraceptive: this would only occur if it were taken before the release of the egg cell from the ovary. But is it likely that a woman who, for various reasons takes a “morning-after pill,” would know what precise point in her cycle she has reached, in order to determine whether the result will be abortifacient or contraceptive?
Furthermore, even if it is true that the woman who takes the “morning-after pill” may not be pregnant or that the abortifacient effect will not occur, the woman who requests the pill and the doctor who prescribes or administers it willingly accept the risk of causing an abortion. Indeed, had there been a pregnancy, they would have opted precisely for abortion.
In the recent debate on the “morning-after pill” in particular and on “emergency contraception” in general, attention was drawn to only one situation which so many desperate persons are facing these days: violence to women in wartime. But watch out: campaigns for the “morning-after pill” do not only concern war zones and they do not only target women who have been raped.
Just think that, along with the many calls for all “emergency contraception” to be sold over the counter at pharmacies, that is, without a medical prescription, and to be readily available at all health-care centres for women and particularly for adolescent girls, there are also aid plans which envisage constant, programmed shipments of “emergency contraceptives” to developing countries and refugee camps.
Family planning organisations
It is in fact a routine practice of family planning organisations to send reproductive emergency kits, not only after a war - which suggests a concern for the woman who has just been raped, although no concern for the baby - but to those places where violent behaviour has not been curbed and so there is a desire to solve the situation in this way. See, for example, what was planned in 1996 for the Great Lakes region in Central Africa: at least $500,000 was allocated to promote reproductive health. The aid package included: family planning; the prevention of so-called unsafe abortions; “emergency contraception” for women who were victims of sexual violence or who had “unprotected” or unplanned sexual relations.
As we have said, the campaign to promote the “morning-after pill” also targets women who have been victims of sexual aggression.
Some have written that, in this case, conception was the result of a violent act, the most cruel, wicked and detestable that a woman can suffer: refusal to accept the elimination of this life - it is said - would be a sin of insensitivity!
It is a fact that the after-effects of rape will never be erased from a woman’s memory, just as she will never be able to forget that someone treated her as an object, someone attacked her with a brutality unworthy even of animals. But not even abortion will erase this memory: those who suggest it, those who impose it, those who request it, answer violence with violence, not only towards the woman, but especially towards the child, whose life should be respected like any other life conceived.
With abortion, wrote John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, n. 58, “the one eliminated is a human being at the very beginning of life. No one more absolutely innocent could be imagined. In no way could this human being ever be considered an aggressor, much less an unjust aggressor! He or she is weak, defenceless, even to the point of lacking that minimal form of defence consisting in the poignant power of a newborn baby’s cries and tears. The unborn child is totally entrusted to the protection and care of the woman carrying him or her in the womb”.
For the woman to accept this child growing in her womb, the child of someone who did not love her, can be extremely difficult: she must be given help and support, she and her child must be cared for. She needs affection, not a box of pills!
When the baby is born, the woman will decide whether to keep it or to give it up to others for care. With the one great certainty however: she has not added to that madness of destruction and death which tried in an instant to erase her dignity as a woman, her world, her aspirations, her hopes. In these cases, real understanding for the woman means practical help for her and for the life of her child.
I object to your first sentence, which suggests that somehow I attempted to be less than truthful in my response.
While your post dealt more with the religious argument, and was much more wordy, my brief response provided the same facts, and was cited from a source that generally opposes the morning-after pill, but from a more scientific rather than religious basis.
| I'll be a little less wordy...as if you never are... life begins at conception. In order for a fetus to be implanted it must be fertilized. A fertilized egg is a person. The effect of causing an otherwise healthy fertilized egg not to implant has the same effect as removing an implanted fertilized egg. In both cases a viable pre born person is MURDERED. U.S. Army Retired |
Romney is a RINO through and through. Do not trust him!
Romney is a RINO through and through. Do not trust him!
Yes, that was the 3rd bullet of my 3-bullet chart showing the three ways the morning-after pill works.
But as I also said, birth control pills work the same way. There are a lot of people who are pro-life but who use birth control, and at some point rightly or wrongly if you insist on people agreeing with you and banning birth control, you won’t win ANY pro-life votes.
| I can't disagree with you about many pro-lifers using birth control which also has an aborcifant effect. BUT..more and more are realizing the Catholic Church is correct and consistent in that regard too and are now anti-birth control. Its not a matter of insisting people agree with me...its a matter of right and wrong. As such its nature is what it is. U.S. Army Retired |
Congratulations on your retirement.
| I should add that no Catholic should vote for Romney for this very reason. U.S. Army Retired |
| Thanks! We are making plans for the March for Life again this year...you going to be attending? U.S. Army Retired |
You must also oppose Fred Thompson then? The Catholic church is clear that abortion for rape and incest is wrong, and Fred Thompson actually SUPPORTS allowing abortion for rape and incest.
Huckabee and Hunter are our only two pure candidates on that regard.
Well said.
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