speaker.gov — The Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is drafting a rule that would place new restrictions on domestic family planning programs. This provision would threaten the funding of organizations if they do not hire people who would refuse to provide birth control and defines abortion to include many types of birth control.
Jul 17, 2008 View in Crawl 4
morganmgheeJul 17, 2008
No, but since someone else is having trouble too:"Bush Administration Tries to Redefine Contraception as AbortionJuly 16th, 2008 by Karina The New York Times reports that the Bush Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services is drafting a rule that would place new restrictions on domestic family planning programs. While current law allows health care providers and professionals to refuse to provide abortions based on their religious beliefs, this provision would threaten the funding of organizations and health facilities if they do not hire people who would refuse to provide birth control and defines abortion so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception.Speaker Pelosi released the following statement on the Administration’s draft proposal:If the Administration goes through with this draft proposal, it will launch a dangerous assault on women’s health.The majority of Americans oppose this out of touch position that redefines contraception as abortion and represents a sustained pattern of the Bush Administration to reject medical and sound science in favor of a misguided ideology that has no place in our government. I urge the President to reject this policy and join with Democrats to focus on preventing unintended pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion through increasing access to family planning services and access to affordable birth control.From Congresswoman Lois Capps, Chair of the Democratic Women’s Working Group:WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today Congresswoman Lois Capps called on the Bush Administration to stop its misguided effort to restrict access to basic family planning services. According to press reports, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is drafting new rules that would severely restrict women’s health care options while undermining the ability of health care providers to secure funding and provide essential services. It would require all recipients of federal health care funding to sign a written certification that they will not “discriminate” against health care entities who refuse to provide patients with abortions or even birth control. “Once again, the Bush Administration is carelessly playing partisan politics with women’s health care,” said Capps, a nurse and Vice-Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health. “Time and again this Administration has jeopardized women’s access to essential family planning services for purely ideological reasons. Sound science and responsible public health practices should never be trumped by political ideology. This proposal is unnecessary and would be harmful to women’s health.”Federal law already protects individuals who prefer to not participate in abortion services and many states have refusal clauses for either individuals or institutions that object to providing or participating in abortions. The Bush Administration proposal goes far beyond those measures and attempts to define abortion services so broadly that it would include many types of birth control, including oral contraception and emergency contraception. Capps and several of her House colleagues will be sending a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services objecting to the draft rule and urging the Administration to reconsider its position. Capps has worked in the past to stop other efforts by the Bush Administration to restrict access to family planning services and contraception. She was part of the successful efforts to allow over-the-counter sales of Plan B emergency contraception and also to prevent attempts to restrict funding from certain health providers who provide comprehensive family planning services.This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 4:34 pm by Karina and is filed under Affordable Health Care, Oversight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site. Comments are closed."That was the whole article. Here's the new york times link: <a class="user" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/washington/15rule.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/washington/15rul ...</a>
mrsteveman1Jul 18, 2008
lol. i love it. I'm not a religious nut, far from it, if you had any idea how often i blast religious idiots for stupid crap....Second, its the governments job because this isn't a personal issue. No one in their right mind truly believes life begins at birth, it begins at conception and grows from there. It is the governments job to prevent people from killing each other, which is in fact what abortion is, and simply because you are carrying the baby inside you doesn't give you absolute control over if it lives or dies.The fact that you directed that ridiculous rant at me, without even understanding my actual position on this stuff, let alone who i am, or to presume I'm some sort of religious nut, is funny.Again, this is not a privacy issue, or a rights issue. There are very few cases where it is acceptable to have an abortion, i think i spelled out some reasonable cases, but "inconvenience" or "because its my life and i can live it how i want" aren't included, and you're a complete moron if you think you have some kind of right to an abortion.
mrsteveman1Jul 18, 2008
this is really funny, you have injected all these things into the conversation assuming you know my position. You don 't at all. I'm not religious in any way, whatsoever. I do however think there are ethical problems with the idea that someone can choose to abort a growing baby simply because they want to, simply because, as you said, the baby cannot survive outside of the mother. That's not a valid support for what you said at all.How about this, what happens if you drink or do drugs while pregnant? That's right, they find out about it and you could end up losing custody as soon as its born, not to mention the baby could have substantial health problems which YOU would be responsible for causing. There are plenty of laws in place already that would otherwise suggest you DON'T have the right to do whatever you want simply because you are carrying a baby.The most ridiculous thing here is, you are pretending this is some kind of right, or that the government is imposing on you. You create a life, you are responsible for protecting it, you don't get absolute control over its fate. Soon as that baby is born if you carried out the procedure done in a late term abortion, you would be charged with murder. That says a lot right there, there can be absolutely no argument whatsoever that late term abortion is murder and is only BARELY legal on the technicality of defining when life is created.No rational person who understands biology would ever argue that life begins at birth, thats the crux of my argument and there are mountains of evidence to support it. Now setting aside all that crap, which you seem to think is somehow clear cut in the other direction, that you can have an abortion simply because you want to, i will say this: Abortion should not be illegal, but it should however be substantially restricted, because there are ways to prevent such situations from ever occurring. Birth control is one, with effective birth control abortion would be virtually unnecessary in the cases i am referring to as being unethical. Rape is an exception, there are others.There are plenty of valid points on both sides of this argument, but please don't try to paint me as a religious nut though, it completely undermines your point, and it seems to suggest that you think only religious nuts would be opposed to abortion, which isn't the case at all as i already pointed out, this is an ethical issue to me, not a religious one, and i have no religion in the first place so its irrelevant.
sulllyJul 31, 2008
All you who believe that the Bush Administration is making contraception illegal seem misinformed. It seems that all of you just want everyone else to pay for your wants. What a bunch of socialists!
immayhemAug 26, 2008
...yes... and HIV hasn't even been proven to be the cause of AIDS. Those drugs, supplied to low income HIV patients BY GOVERNMENT CONTRACT (the profits of which line the pockets of Rockefeller, who in turn lines the pockets of the US Gov. Crime Syndicate - Pelosi included) are what actually cause AIDS - and taxpayers are paying for it.This is how everything is done here in the US.You can bet that birth control would be available and cheap if more profit were not to be made by:1) hospital birth2) low-income kids vaccinations3) cannon fodder for their high-dollar wars.