Before leaving office, President George W. Bush apparently plans to sign an executive order that will expand the rights of doctors, healthcare workers, and pharmacists to refuse to provide patients with various services and treatments, based on their own moral and religious beliefs. This will likely involve procedures such as abortion and artificial insemination and medications such as birth control pills and the so-called “morning after” pill. The uproar from women’s groups has already begun.
They claim that this is an attempt by Bush to usurp their rights to make their own reproductive decisions. They say this would deny them the services and medications they want and need. But is this really the case? I say they’re making a fallacious argument. In reality, no one is denying them squat. Just because a woman can’t force a given doctor to perform an abortion and a given pharmacist to fill a prescription for birth control pills doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be able to get them. There are plenty of doctors and pharmacists who would be more than willing to oblige.
Also, this is not a matter of picking on women, as many of them would have us believe. This order will also allow medical professionals to refuse to prescribe or fill prescriptions for men’s erectile dysfunction therapies such as Viagra and Cialis, for example.
If I were a doctor, I would take full advantage of this right to choose and would not discriminate against either gender. I would not prescribe birth control to anyone (male or female) who was not married. Why would single people need birth control anyway? In addition, I would not do abortions except in cases of rape, non-consensual incest, or when the life or health of the mother would be in danger without one. I would only do artificial insemination procedures for married couples and only when they could not have a child any other way – and the sperm would have to come from the husband, not some stranger. Also, I would prescribe stuff like Viagra or Cialis only for married men.
Those who criticize this order are being disingenuous and hypocritical. Most of them talk the talk about choice but it’s obviously a one-way street for them. They strongly defend a woman’s right to choose but do not want to afford doctors and other medical workers the same. If we’re going to have true choice in this country, then it has to work both ways.
And what about those who are always screaming about religious freedom and the separation of church and state? They are also being hypocritical when they criticize this order. Forcing people to do something that goes against their religion is a blatant imposition on their religious freedom. And when the government is doing the forcing, it’s a clear violation of the First Amendment. I guess, to some people, it’s okay for the government to bully religion, as long it never works the other way around.

Recent Comments