Birth Control Pills, Condoms = Abortion, says Department of Health and Human Services

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Thu, August 21, 2008

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The Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a new regulation that would allow health care professionals and hospitals the right to refuse to provide women access to even the most common forms of contraception - everything from birth control pills to condoms to the "morning after" pill - under the auspices that such contraception is a form of abortion.

The proposed regulation defines defines abortion as "any of the various procedures -- including the prescription 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."

"It's an effort to try to stigmatize contraception and family planning," said Marcia Greenberger, the co-president of the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C. "It should be a clarion call to women and men in this country that a kind of extremist view has begun to take hold - to make even birth control and contraception more difficult to secure, and that it could lead to the same kind of stigmatization that has existed in the case of abortion."

HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt said that the new controversial proposed regulations are aimed to protect the physician from having to prescribe birth control if they are morally opposed to contraception. The law already allows doctors to refuse to perform abortions on the basis of conscience but the regulations would extend that privledge to allow doctors to deny patients contraception, by way of legally defining contraception as abortion.

According to the San Francisco Chronical, the "impact of this ruling could be huge," because if it passes, "women seeking health care at a center that receives HHS funds -- and there are nearly 504,000 of them -- will no longer be assured of access to birth control and other contraceptives." The Chronicle adds that "HHS is moving stealthily because it knows that there's no public support for such reactionary regulations -- 73% of voters believe strongly in making contraception easier for women of all incomes to obtain" (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/6).

An online form to send your comments to HHS can be found at http://www.hhs.gov/ContactUs.html.

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Amy Hendel

8/21/08 4:33pm

My duties lie with giving the best information to the patient which means all options, whether or not I agree with choices. The patient can't ever be made to feel that their ultimate decision cannot be honored. What do you think?

Are you kidding me?

8/21/08 5:36pm

What is this? 1950? I'm shocked and appalled that this issue is even being debated in the year 2008. What ever happened to progress?

OK, it's not actually that shocking that the Bush Administration is continuing to curtail women's reproductive freedoms. They've already made it legal for pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions. Now they want to give doctors the legal right to deny women birth control while these same doctors continue to receive federal funding? It's great to know our tax dollars are being so well spent. Ladies, we need to stand up and fight this.

In the meantime, dry your tears with some hilarious commentary from comedian Bill Maher:

"Pharmacists have to fill prescriptions. More and more American pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control because of their personal moral objections. Hey, you know what would really teach us a lesson? If you took off your pretend doctor jacket and got another job.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe cutting off the pill doesn't even go far enough. Yeah, it's high time activist drugstores stopped coddling sluts on every aisle. Let's not sell any more makeup either. A good woman doesn't paint herself. And no more deodorant. You should smell bad. Keep the boys from getting ideas. And no suntan lotion. I've seen what happens at the MTV Beach House, you whore. You want to avoid melanoma? Buy a veil.

Why is this country becoming Utah?! You know, I know the conservatives are always saying that the coastal elites don't really get it about them because we just fly over. Okay, maybe. But, you know what? You guys don't get us either.

Now, of course, I know the other side is saying, yes, but this is a moral issue. Yeah, but the problem is, not everyone gets their morals from the same book. You go by the book that says slavery is okay but sex is wrong until after marriage, at which point it becomes a blessed sacrament between a husband and the wife who is withholding it.

In conclusion, let me say to all the activist pharmacists out there, the ones who think sex is bad probably because sex with them always is- fellas, a pharmacist is not a law-giver, not even a doctor. In the medical pecking order, you rank somewhere in between a chiropractor and a tree surgeon.

You don't answer to a law above the laws of men. You work for Sav-On. The doctors are the ones who make medical decisions because they went to medical school, whereas you were transferred from the counter where people drop off film."

Check out more of Bill Maher's hilarious observations here.

Anonymous

8/22/08 7:29pm

No matter what, the use of contraception or the decision to get an abortion is all up to the woman. No one should be allowed to refuse forms of contraception to someone else. It probably won't even affect them in the long run. A woman's body belongs to her and she should be the judge of what she can do to protect herself of anunwanted pregnancy. If she decides to use something she would be the one who carries the guilt...no one else so pharmisits and doctors should have any right to refuse something women ask/search/need.

Melanie Hendel

8/22/08 8:28pm

It's quite fascinating this discussion that has taken our nation by stranglehold. Our so dearly respected Department of Health and Human Services, "Health" and "Human Services" ironically being the key words, clearly have avid concern for well, our health and yes, the service it does for us humans. There seems to be no problem in the endorsement of condoms, as naturally this reduces risks in men and female. But when it comes to an extra helping of the female, there seems to be a slight turn of the head. In case any one has forgotten, while a man can trump along and toot his crooked horn in as many women as he so pleases, women are left to deal with the consequences. These consequences can indeed be a baby. Since the beginning of time, we women bite our lips when it comes to nine months of pain... yes, just a tad more pain than a man pumping his measly 300 pounds of iron. But is it too much to ask that we have the right to choose whether we're ready to carry and care for a child?

It's so beautifully comical how men consume half the discussion when it comes to abortion. We have law makers, senators, lobbyists and now health department officials, mostly men offering their great wisdom as to how a woman should handle her body. Has the world gone mad and have we forgotten that this is something that affects women? How foolish of us to forget that Mister doctor might have a moral quandary regarding a woman's sex life and we don't want anyone living with that kind of blood on his (or her) hand. (Forget the fact that plenty of people are refused health insurance but no doctor sees any blood stained hands there)

I don't see any doctors or health officials advising men (though castrating might be more appropriate at this point of the discussion) to reduce their sexual actions. Life is filled with mistakes. People smoke and though they know the risk of cancer. And yet, ample research and treatment is devoted to cancer patients. People eat unhealthy, high fat, high sugar foods and yet thousands of dollars are spent on saving, treating and helping heart attack and stroke patients. Life is all about consequences and being selective about which ones we help is simply outrageous. Especially when it seems to affect an entire gender.

If we're all so concerned with the possibility of an unwanted fetus, perhaps in addition to women being denied abortion or contraceptives, men be fined or jailed for his equal participation in hasty, un-"condomed" sex.

Anonymous

8/27/08 1:03am

The dictionary defiinitoin of abortion is "removal or induced expulsion of a fetus".

How can a woman who choses to take birth control be accused of abortion when no fetus was concieved? The sperm and egg must join and merge together in order for a fetus to even come into existence, and correct me if I'm worng, but does not sperm come from men and not women? Meaning, men have an equal part in the need for birth control and are just as much to blame.

Is our society ready to pay to cost of running more orphanages and are the resources available to help troubled children? The direct result of banning birth control will be a rise in the birth rate.

The expenses don't stop at orphanages and resources but rather continue on to an increased demand of housing, food, schools, jobs, health care, and the list goes on.

Not all women who seek the morning after pill ar doing so as a result of planned or spontanous unprotected sex.

There are women out there who have been raped and take the morning after pill to ensure that they do not concieve a child from a horible moment in their life. Not many women can bear to care for a child that was concived through rape, especially if the child looks like the rapist, as it brings back many paniful memories that the mother would rather forget every time she looks at her child and causes the mother to hate and despise the child.

How about the women who are prescribed birth control as a means of regulating their period or reducing the symptoms of PMS, or to help balance out their hormones? These women, and quite often teenage girls, are not necessarily sexually active, but are rather taking birth control as a means of treating a medical problem, no different then a person taking pills for high blood presure or aniexty attacks.

No doctor, or pharmacist for that matter, should have the right to refuse anyone the medical treatment that they require. How would these doctors feel if the shoe was on the other foot and they were being denied access to treatments that can save or at the very least enhance their lives just because of their gender, race, or the fact that they gain their livelyhood in the medical field?

Birth Control Pills, Condoms = Abortion, says Department of Health and Human Services

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