Protests Over a Rule to Protect Health Providers

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job discrimination laws.

The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors’ offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to “assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity” financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But three officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including its legal counsel, whom President Bush appointed, said the proposal would overturn 40 years of civil rights law prohibiting job discrimination based on religion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/washington/18abort.html?th&emc=th

[Night_Nurse]

1. Medicare should stop all payments to Catholic hospitals...

how dare someone refuse to provide medical treatment based on their personal dogma? Those zealots need to find another line of work.

[MountainLaurel]

2. I agree completely

And it goes far beyond Catholics to any provider whose dogma is going to interfere with their provision of medical care: Baptists who tell the mentally ill to pray away the depression, "Christians" who won't perform IVF for lesbians or single women, etc.