Friday, December 19, 2008

President Bush sacrifices your health to his religion

From The Wall of Separation

The lame-duck administration has issued sweeping guidelines that allegedly “protect” the religious freedom rights of health-care workers.

What the new regs really do is infringe on your rights. As The Washington Post reported, “The far-reaching regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable. It was sought by conservative groups, abortion opponents and others to safeguard workers from being fired, disciplined or penalized in other ways.”

Translation: If your pharmacist doesn’t want to fill a birth-control prescription given to you by a doctor because it offends his religious sensibilities, he doesn’t have to. If you’re a gay woman exploring in-vitro fertilization, a worker at the lab can bring the process to a screeching halt by refusing to assist. Catholic hospitals can refuse to provide certain types of critical care, such as morning-after pills, to rape victim.
Once again we see religious freedom defined as the right to impose one's religious beliefs on others with the power of the state. As I've said before, that ain't religious freedom:

Freedom of religion is not the freedom to become a pharmacist and then deny patients legally prescribed medication because of your personal moral objections to the patient's life choices. That's not freedom of religion. That's the freedom to oppress others ... sorry, fundamentalists, you don't have that right.
Heck, what's next? Some junior Falwell-type pharmacist thinks HIV is a punishment from God and won't fill prescriptions to gay men, gets fired then maybe the entire state gets its funding cut? Are you kidding me? This is why Republicans do not deserve to win an election for a very long time ... for at least as long as they continue to want to March to Gilead.

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