Bush Administration redefines contraception as abortion?
Posted by Moonage on 18 Aug 2008 | Tagged as: Conspiracy Theories
A friend of mine sent me a petition on facebook. I get them all the time. I almost never “sign” them. Signing them means you get inundated with stuff I don’t want. However, if it’s really that important, I might. Probably won’t, but might. So, imagine my response when I saw this:
Petition: Contraception is NOT Abortion!
Well, that seems obvious enough to me. So, I had to check it out. What I got was this:
20,000 people have joined this group in just 2 days! Please invite your friends!
* * * * *
It seems unbelievable, but the Bush Administration is quietly trying to redefine “abortion” to include birth control. The Houston Chronicle says this could wipe out dozens of state laws that protect women’s reproductive freedom and protect rape victims. This “rule change” doesn’t need congressional approval.Can you join over 250,000 others in signing this emergency message to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, whose department is considering this rule change right now?
Click here to sign:
http://pol.moveon.org/contraception/?rc=fb.cnotaMoveOn and Planned Parenthood will deliver the petition to Secretary Leavitt this coming week.
Petition Text:
“Contraception is NOT abortion. The Bush Administration’s proposal to change the definition of abortion and reduce women’s access to birth control must be stopped.”
If you haven’t caught it yet, if you click on that link, you go straight to moveon.org.
I hate moveon.org.
They are everything that is wrong with politics today.
They put the “swift boat” in swift boating. They just got beat at in 2004.
They circumvent everything McCain-Feingold intended.
They are ruining the United States of America in every conceivable way.
Have I made myself clear how I feel about them?
So, I knew when I saw that link there would be something bad wrong. This is actually the point of contention they are complaining about:
Specifically in regards to situations where:
…the new requirement is needed to ensure that federal money does not “support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.” The administration said Congress had passed a number of laws to ensure that doctors, hospitals and health plans would not be forced to perform abortions.
Now read that first part again. You don’t even have to read it carefully. But it seems to me totally contradictory from one part to the next. In simple terms, one can not terminate something that never happened. They are not redefining contraception. They are including the morning-after pill as an abortion process in assumption. However, according to morningafterpill.org, their assertion is that morning after pills are an emergency contraception only. It does cause an abortion, it just doubly assures that if you forgot your pill or condom or whatever, you can make doubly sure you don’t get pregnant. Under that assumption, this wouldn’t apply to the rules “change” moveon.org is so wild about. What will happen if this rule change is accepted as proposed is that hospitals accepting HHS monies will have to provide ALL options to someone who is considering abortions. That, as far as I know of, from nurses in the field, is what happens now for the most part. Since they don’t know the circumstances, they just provide all the options available and go with what the patient requests. However, since abortions are not performed here, they are given a list of where to go if they choose that route.
In our case, absolutely nothing would change.
Now, I am not so naive to think there are not medical facilities with vested political agendas, so I’ll assume in this case that some of them try to push their patients in one direction or another. For instance, I seriously doubt a hospital funded by Catholic Charities will be giving patients the option of an abortion. If that hospital is receiving HHS monies, under this change, they will be forced to make the patient aware that abortion is an option and where they could get one.
Not exactly the angle MoveOn.org is giving you is it?
Additionally, since I interpret this as addressing the morning after pill almost singly, and their argument is that it is a contraceptive and not an abortion process, I expect a lawsuit will result that will get very, very, very interesting. Specifically, someone, in order to enforce this rule, will have to prove whether conception has occurred in every single case of someone receiving HHS money and wanting the morning after pill.
Mankind has been debating that issue for decades.
The net result as I predict it will be:
- the government, at this time, does not have the ability to prove when conception actually occurs and therefore can not determine what is technically prevention or abortion. So, that part will be nixed.
- The rest of the rule change, when a lawsuit compels Catholic Charities to offer abortions as an option, will be nixed as well.
- Lastly, not one single person who has signed or does sign that petition at MoveOn.org has even read the rule. If they did, they wouldn’t have signed the petition.
6 Comments »
on 18 Aug 2008 at 7:30 pm 1.Pages tagged "an angle" said …
[...] bookmarks tagged an angle Bush Administration redefines contraception as abo… saved by 9 others MagicWolf64 bookmarked on 08/18/08 | [...]
on 19 Aug 2008 at 12:41 am 2.American Phoenix
said …
There has already been a lawsuit in California requiring Catholic Charities to offer the pill as part of its health insurance plan. The pill is an abortifacient agent. Therefore, there has already been a lawsuit requiring Catholic Charities to offer abortions.
You are about five to ten years behind the news on this one, Moon.
The latest atrocity from the California Supreme Court is that medical doctors may not refuse to provide artificial reproduction technology to homosexuals. The two medical doctors in question claimed that they would not provide this service because the woman was unmarried, and because to be compelled to do so was a violation of their right to free exercise of their reglious beliefs.
The Supreme Court ruled against the doctors on both counts.
Apparently, the only people who have the right to “define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” are homosexual activists. (In case you don’t get that quote, it’s from the infamous Lawrence v. Texas decision.)
This is exactly why there is a need for a conscientious objector’s clause, which is precisely what the Bush administration is working on. Because the courts can’t be trusted to interpret what the constitution actually says.
on 19 Aug 2008 at 2:37 pm 3.Moonage
said …
I know this issue has been floating around for a while, but it’s the very recent moveon.org attempting to make it an election issue by misleading people that is what I am responding to. That wasn’t five years ago, it’s happening right now. My point is not the specifics of the history of the abortion pill, it’s how it’s going to be interpreted if this rule change holds up. Moveon.org is arguing ALL contraceptives will be treated as abortions. That’s just simply not true and not at all supported by what the rule change suggests. So, I’m not really concerning myself with the nuts and bolts of what has happened over the last five years in this case. I’m just disgusted by how Moveon is portraying it and how 250,000 gullible people jumped right on it without a clue what they were doing and even tried to get me to join it knowing how moveon feels about Republicans. It just tells me they don’t even have a clue what moveon is, what it’s agenda is, or who primarily funds it. All they have to do is take some hot-button issue, turn it against Bush, and bam! Everyone just believes them.
Disgusting.
That to me tells me a lot more about moveon.org than it does anything else.
on 12 Sep 2008 at 12:32 pm 4.Heather said …
In having done much research on this bill recently, I must admit that your take on it had not occurred to me. While you make several valid arguments, your reasons for standing against the bill are not my main concerns. My main concern is that organizations like Planned Parenthood would be legally obligated to hire individuals who are so vastly pro life as to not even desire to dispense hormonal birth control or information about hormonal birth control (or the copper IUD). It seems to me that therefore these individuals (if working at Planned Parenthood) would be allowed to refuse to do a large percentage of their job description and to spread religious and/or moral propaganda contradictory to the organization’s goals.
I recently had a Mirena IUD inserted at Planned Parenthood, and I appreciated the willingness of the clinic to inform me of the benefits/risks of this contraceptive in a non-biased way. I am very afraid that if this becomes law, I would not be able to find someone easily willing to do procedures such as IUD insertion in medical practices like Planned Parenthood.
I am also concerned that this law is just the beginning of a new definition of contraceptives as abortifacients, which cannot be proven. The actions of hormonal birth control are likely a combination of factors, the least of which, it seems, is preventing implantation. Thus, even if this bill passed and ended up being for the greater good, as you claim it will, this unrealistic definition of abortion is still present and can go much further, creating a great risk that women will either become frightened of most contraceptives, or that they will have a hard time accessing it.
Thanks for the information - I know I’m a little late reading this, but I’d appreciate hearing your arguments to these points before I decide to sign the petition. I’ve never been a huge fan of Move on myself. Thanks,
Heather
on 12 Sep 2008 at 3:00 pm 5.Moonage
said …
Just a couple of points of clarification.
1. I do not say this is a good thing. I am saying once tested, it’ll be shot down.
2. Secondly, and most importantly, this is not a bill. It’s a policy change. That’s a huge difference. A bill would have to go through a million hoops to be enacted. It would then have to go through the legal system to be rectified. A policy is changed with one letter instructing the appropriate people to do something different. As such, if there proves to be a problem with the policy, it is just as easily rectified. Additionally, a policy change in itself does not carry the weight of the law. The weight of the law would be determined if there is a conflict between the policy maker and the person who feels that policy change affects them adversely. If there is proven to be an adverse affect, the policy maker can easily stop the legal process by changing the policy again. If it’s a bill ( law ), they don’t have that flexibility.
Understanding that, I said what I said. If Catholic Charities, which is a huge organization with tons of political clout, makes a stink big enough, they alone could get this policy changed. That would happen quietly behind the scenes. There is no need for someone like Moveon to make this a political stunt. And, that’s all their angle is since they haven’t spent the 30 seconds it would have taken for them to determine a much more appropriate means of getting their desired remedy. In addition, this doesn’t even affect Moveon. Moveon is a Democrat 527. They have no vested interest whatsoever in health policy. That’s why I checked it out first. I work in the medical industry. There are organizations I respect to speak on my behalf. Not one single one is a political 527.
Do what you think is right. But, do understand that I am fully convinced this is simply a stunt by Moveon to do what it is their charter says they intend to do, promote the Democrat agenda. In order to do what is right, I would look to interests affected by the policy, Planned Parenthood is a good one to start with. Catholic Charities would be another. I have not looked at either, I can only hope they have looked at the entire picture and not relied on biased political rhetoric for their information. If they do, then they’ll go to Washington making the wrong arguments and not get anything done. Which is exactly what Moveon is doing right now.
on 23 Sep 2008 at 2:04 pm 6.Recent Links Tagged With "boating" - JabberTags said …
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