8mm
Posted on 12/20/2008 10:19:34 AM PST by wagglebee
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Bush administration has finalized the new rules that protect both medical professionals and medical staff who don’t want to be involved in abortions or abortion referrals. The Department of Health and Human Services released the final rule that will go into effect on January 20.
The new regulations are intended to clarify and enforce existing federal laws that protect the choices of health care providers who have moral objections to abortion.
The regulation clarifies and implements existing federal statutes enacted by Congress in 1973, 1996 and 2004.
The federal laws, which protect the conscience of medical officials and centers, have been violated and the new rules increase enforcement by having certain agencies put in writing that they will enforce the laws or be subject to losing federal funding.
Responding to the news, Deirdre McQuade, a representative of the nation’s Catholic bishops, said she welcomed the new Bush administration rules because they welcomed the published regulation as a way to protect medical personnel from being coerced to violate their consciences in federally funded programs.
“Individuals and institutions committed to healing should not be required to take the very human life that they are dedicated to protecting,” McQuade told LifeNews.com. “The enforcement of federal laws to protect their freedom of conscience is long overdue.”
“Catholic health care providers will especially welcome this mark of respect for the excellent life-affirming care they provide to all in need. But Catholics do not stand alone in opposition to the deliberate destruction of nascent human life. All health care providers should be free to serve their patients without violating their most deeply held moral and religious convictions in support of life,” McQuade said.
McQuade told LifeNews.com she’s concerned that the regulations are already coming under fire from incoming president Barack Obama and pro-abortion members of Congress.
“Respect for conscience rights on abortion should be a strong point of agreement among those considering themselves ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice.’ Yet this regulation is already under attack,” she said.
Senators Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray have already filed a bill, S. 20, to invalidate the law and pro-abortion members of the House submitted a companion version.
Meanwhile, abortion advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL may flout their "pro-choice" rhetoric and file suit against the anti-forced abortion policies.
Mary Jane Gallagher, president and chief executive of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, repeated the pro-abortion talking points on Monday by claiming the policy is related to birth control even though HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt removed language from it in August pertaining to birth control.
"It's totally a ruse. It's totally a new social war on birth control, which I find ludicrous," she said.
Leavitt explained the intent of the rule on the HHS web site and said it was about "the legal right medical practitioners have to practice according to their conscience, and patients should be able to choose a doctor who has beliefs like his or hers."
"Is the fear here that so many doctors will refuse that it will somehow make it difficult for a woman to get an abortion? That hasn't happened, but what if it did? Wouldn't that be an important and legitimate social statement?" he added.
That's because "pro-choice" has ALWAYS meant pro-death.
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Why would pro-choice people want to force doctors to perform abortions?
Merry Christmas and God Bless WBEE.
It’s a marxism thing.
Our newly elected messiah who is an enthusiastic supporter of murdering the unborn will revoke this somehow soon after he is president.
How dare you little people decide for yourselves.
This will be overturned by the new incoming Baby Killer In Chief in a matter of months... or weeks.
Actually the ‘affirmative action-elect’ is an enthusiastic defender of removing Constitutional rights from newly born alive children in order to protect killing them via ‘induced labor abortion’, as practiced for years in Illinois abortuaries.
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That's a very good question.
Probably hours.
Sadly, I agree. And while I think this effort by Bush is great, why did it take seven years and 11 months to do this in the first place?
Probably longer than hours. They have to arrange a photo op and a signing ceremony and choose a bunch of Hollyweirds to slap him on the back as he’s expanding the holocaust.
Think of it as Rape.
They will already be in town for the inauguration, they will probably do it at the inaugural ball on live TV.
Perhaps they only have regard for the pregnant woman who opts to abort and no regard for the doctor who might find it repugnant, against his/her religion, or an act of murder.
Obama is pro-choice. On infants.
To drive out non pro choice doctors. Same reason why Illinois has it illegal to not give out the abortion pill.
Although I know of at least two doctors who have said “no” and nothing has happened to them.
They aren't really "pro-choice". That's a dodge to make their position palatable. What they really are is pro-abortion and anti-child.
But the joke may be on them, because the same "right of privacy" that the SCOTUS says protects abortion must also be understood to protect the right not to participate in abortion, or it becomes just so much hash. (As in, a pregnant woman gets to decide that her unborn child isn't really human life, and then everyone else is legally forced to get behind her position and act accordingly? I don't think so ...)
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