Fisking. Because I just can't help it.

[catsittingstill]

For background let me point out that the Bush administration has proposed --like seriously we-are-going-to-make-this-law-in-30-days proposed, to allow "freedom of conscience" for health care providers not to provide abortions  (and they have cleverly redefined about half of contraception to be "abortion" also).  Vixy has a good post on it.

One of the people on my friends list thinks we shouldn't have a problem with this.  I emphatically disagree. 

My friend's comments are in italics.

Another Incorrect Political Rant
Regarding Doctors' Abortion Choices and the reaction of some.

1) It always amazes me that so many people can credit one reason and one reason only for an anti-abortion stand - a deep-seated hate of women.

Well, leaving aside the obvious fact that the inevitable result if they get their way will be a vast increase in the suffering of women, I get that impression because the pro-life advocates I see on the net never mention the fetus's host in any kind of positive way.  She's a slut, she's a whore, she's careless and irresponsible, she should have thought of that before she opened her legs, the cunt.  The best she can hope for is to be non-existent--to disappear from the discussion completely.

I would love for this to be different.  But you can understand how I come away with the impression that these people hate women.

Now, if that's really just a tiny subset of the "pro-life" crowd, the rest of the "pro-life" crowd--the people who believe that a woman pregnant against her will is a human being, with human dignity, and human rights, including the right not to be enslaved--need to get off their butts and start speaking up.  Not to me--I already know that women are human beings.  No, pro-life people who don't hate women need to be speaking to the pro-life people who do.  And they need to be speaking so loudly, and clearly, and forcefully, and often, that everyone can see they are the majority in the pro-life movement.

I would love for this to happen.  They won't listen to me; I'm pro-choice.  And a woman.  But they might listen to you.  Especially if there are enough of you.  Good luck with it; let me know how it goes for you.

Clearly, there's no way anyone should be allowed to believe that life begins at conception. Since there's no way to prove it, it must be false. Since it is thusly false, anyone who professes to it is lying or deluded (especially women. Women who are strong and independent and can think for themselves except if they believe this and therefore have been deluded or browbeaten or otherwise forced to act against their own best interests.)

Well, I'm part of the reality based community.  If you expect to enslave me for it, you'd damn well better be able to prove it, because I will not cooperate with being enslaved for somebody's fantasy, and there's no reason why I should.

And frankly I have always believed that what makes a person human is not their geneset, but their human consciousness.  Terry Schiavo was not a human for the several years before her body was taken off tube-feeding--she was dead in any meaningful sense of the word because her brain was dead, even though she had human DNA.  And an artificial intelligence, some kind of computer entity or whatever, that has a human-like consciousness deserves human rights as far as I'm concerned.  But a fetus has a brain the size of a speck; it doesn't have human consciousness because that consciousness doesn't have enough meat to live in.  So I don't regard it as human.

And yes, it does happen that people who are raised in abusive environments and led to believe that they deserve to be enslaved, internalize the values of their abusers.  It's called Stockholm Syndrome when it manifests in an adult.  Show me a strong independent minded woman who was raised by pro-choice parents and became pro-life on her own, without duress, after considering the subject, and you will impress me.  Not convince me, because even a strong independent minded woman can be wrong, but at least impress me, because I've never seen one who made this transition.

 2) In this particular debate, it amazes me that people think it is clearly in the interests of society to force a political belief down doctors' throats. The crowd wanting to do so didn't find this acceptable when it was doctors believing abortion was right even though it was not legal, nor was it acceptable when it was doctors believing in assisted suicide, but it is certainly acceptable in this case.

The thing is, an ob/gyn who wants to put his nose in the air and say "I won't perform abortions; that's immoral" is like a vegetarian who wants to get a job at McDonalds, and wants to have a uniform, and get paid, and take up a place at the counter so I can't reach a real employee, but who won't sell me a hamburger because eating meat is immoral.  I'm fine with, and even respect, her moral choice for herself, but her refusal to sell me a hamburger isn't a moral choice, it's a power play.

If it were a moral choice, there's a nice Christian bookstore down the street where no one will ask her to have anything to do with meat.  Or if her heart is set on food service, she could work at a bakery, a sweet shop, an ice-cream store, a fruit and vegetable stand...  There are hundreds of places she can work where meat never enters the picture.  So obviously the McDonalds thing isn't about her being able to avoid working with meat.  It's about her being able to force me to do without meat.

And by the same token, you can be everything from an allergist to a xerophthalmologist, or if you'd rather think in spacial terms, a brain surgeon to a podiatrist without being expected to perform abortions.  If your heart is set on being a doctor and working with babies and not being expected to perform abortions, you can be a pediatrician for Pete's sake!  This "conscience" crap isn't about not having to perform abortions, it's about the power play of being able to force pregnant women to do without abortions.

And I for one have zero sympathy for somebody else enslaving me, or any other woman, by for the sake of their power play. 

(snip) At the bottom here is that there IS a real shortage of doctors with the skill necessary to provide safe abortions in many parts of the country.
Yes.  Exactly.  And the in-sorrow-shalt-thou-bring-forth-children crowd is encouraging people to enter medical school, take up the spots that could be taken by students with a genuine concern for women's reproductive health, and then use them to grandstand, get attention in the papers, and enforce their power to deny us reproductive choice.

Some of them aren't willing to do so due to their personal beliefs. The solution is NOT to force them to go against their beliefs, it is to make sure there are plenty of doctors willing to provide those services. Something tells me that in the long run it would be cheaper to find a way to do that than to run a huge controversial campaign to convince those doctors that their personal beliefs are trivial or to otherwise legalize them out of existence.

If their personal beliefs are really about more than grandstanding, getting their pictures in the paper and making a power play to enslave women to unwanted pregnancies, then let them give up on working at McDonalds, and choose the ice cream store, the fruit and vegetable stand, the bakery.  Let them be allergists and pediatricians and podiatrists.  I don't have a problem with their personal beliefs--I have a problem with them trying to deny me mine.  And that is precisely what they are trying to do.

And unfortunately they're cynically using your respect for their moral choices to do it.  It's very important that people recognize the difference between a moral choice to forgo a gain on someone's own part, and that same person's power play to force someone else to forgo that gain.

Government forcing belief. It may not seem to be religion because it's so humanistically right, but it isn't that far from it. And the reverse is not the case here - no one is telling the doctors who believe in abortion that they can't perform them.

One, requiring ob/gyns and pharmacists to actually do the jobs they get paid for is not forcing anyone's belief.  If they honestly can't bring themselves to handle meat there are a dozen other food service specialties; if they honestly can't bring themselves to provide abortions or birth control, there are a dozen other medical specialties where it won't be an issue.  It's about requiring them not to use their power to force their choices on innocent women.  It really is as simple as that.

And realistically,  how many doctors can a hospital afford to hire?  This rule is specifically set up to make it impossible to require that a doctor hired for a particular position be willing to perform abortions--that's its whole point.  Plus, the hospital won't be able to fire a doctor who isn't willing to perform abortions to try again to get one who will.  At some point the hospital will have all the doctors it can support--then what?  The traumatized rural teen can't necessarily reach another doctor, and another, and another until she finds one who believes in her right not to be enslaved.

Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the inevitable end result of this law will be to increase the suffering of women, like that traumatized rural teen, by ensuring the birth of unwanted babies.  But, gosh, this coincidence keeps popping up with the "pro-life" crowd, doesn't it?  Hmmm.  Makes you think that maybe, just maybe, increasing the suffering of women might be the whole point.

I also do not believe that those who think life begins at conception and are trying to stop abortion are evil and morally corrupt. I think they are incorrect, but I don't think their questions are beyond debate. After all, a mere 200 years ago only a minority believed those of darker skin were human. Every abortion supporter should constantly ask themselves the question, "What if we're wrong?"

I would be a whole lot more comfortable with this idea if there were any evidence at all that the "pro-life" crowd is asking itself the same question.

And if they're not actually morally corrupt, I would expect to see a whole lot of soul searching going on over there as they try to balance the speck-human's right to live, with the necessity of enslaving an innocent woman to labor for its good.  I don't see any of that soul-searching.  Which is consistent with them hating women, or at least with them not seeing women as human beings with human rights that really, honestly, matter.   I'm trying to come up with what else it might be consistent with, and failing.  Maybe my imagination isn't good enough.  Any thoughts, anyone?

I'm tired of campaigns for rights that seek to do so on the back of denying other rights.

And yet the campaign for the "rights" of fetuses is precisely this sort of campaign; it is based on denying the right of the undeniably real human being involved not to be enslaved.  Even if we were talking about saving one human being (supposing for a moment that something with no human brain is still a human being, just for the sake of argument) is it really okay to subject another human being to enslavement,  indeed, the most intimate, invasive, form of enslavement imaginable--and furthermore an enslavement that could lead to her very death---to achieve it? 

I think not.

I am especially tired of them when other avenues exist that could resolve problems without resort to such high-and-mighty self opinions on both sides. I am monumentally tired of the pat, simple answer that there must be hate involved because someone doesn't agree with the "correct" position.

I don't think the "pro-life" people hate women because they disagree with me.  I think they hate women because their rhetoric speaks of women who disagree with them as evil, as irresponsible, as sluts.  I think they hate women because the knotty moral question of the enslavement of one undeniably human being for the good of another possibly human being never enters their discourse.  I think they hate women because the inevitable result if their actions are successful will be a vast increase in the suffering of women.

Given all that, they can disagree with me for free.

Comments

[pondside.livejournal.com]

The flip answer is that perhaps these people own shares in clothes hanger companies.

I can understand that it is abhorrent to demand that dr's go against their own personal principles and ethical code to perform surgery that they believe is inherently wrong.

I don't think that abortion should be used as a primary method of birth control.

I would never force anyone to have an abortion against their will.

Pro Choice is not Pro Abortion. It grants the right to make the appropriate decision based upon the specific circumstances of each life.



I will fight against anyone who tells me that I should not have that choice. History has proven that whether you use an operating room, a back alley abortionist, a wise herbalist or a witch doctor, abortions will still be performed. So, do you want the women to die or live? Or, do you just want to be "right"? is the question that those folks should ask themselves.

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

I am especially tired of them when other avenues exist that could resolve problems without resort to such high-and-mighty self opinions on both sides. I am monumentally tired of the pat, simple answer that there must be hate involved because someone doesn't agree with the "correct" position.

>I don't think the "pro-life" people hate women because they disagree with me. I think
>they hate women because their rhetoric speaks of women who disagree with them as evil, as >irresponsible, as sluts. I think they hate women because the knotty moral question of the >enslavement of one undeniably human being for the good of another possibly human being >never enters their discourse. I think they hate women because the inevitable result if >their actions are successful will be a vast increase in the suffering of women.

>Given all that, they can disagree with me for free.

Or speaks of such women as murderers, or the people who perform legal procedures as murderers.

Even if it isn't hatred of women, it's an effort to impose one's conscience on another. The doctors have a choice--they can be in another type of medicine. But the women needing or wanting birth control or abortions don't always have a choice of practitioners. I've read some article that say that since the right to lifers haven't succeeded in overturning Roe v. Wade, they are, instead, making it as difficult as possible to get abortions. They are imposing waiting periods, parental consent, etc., on a state-by-state basis.

I don't know if Obama will be able to overturn this law should he get into office. It's unlikely McCane will. And while it works its way through the courts women will be forced to carry pregnancies to term, or risk pregnancies because they don't have access to birth control. This is simply another way to take us back to back alley abortions. If doctor's don't have to prescribe birth control if its against their conscience, then they don't have to provide the morning after pill either. I think this is Bush's way of leaving a legacy that reinforces his fundamentalist beliefs.

Shortly after I graduated from college, I went into my neighborhood, family owned, pharmacy--one I had patronized for several years--with an RX for a birth control device. The older woman who owned the pharmacy said. "Oh no! We don't fill prescriptions for birth control! That's against our religion." Her son was behind her, rolling his eyes, but when it was clear she was adamant, I told her that they had just lost ALL my business. I never went in there again. But in the San Francisco Bay Area I have lots of choices.

I agree with you about the problem of hospitals having a limited number of MD slots they can fill, and having doctors who come in who don't disclose that they won't do abortions, and then they can't be fired under this new law. While I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, the right to lifers have made it clear that they will do almost *anything* to stop abortions. I believe them.

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

the right to lifers have made it clear that they will do almost *anything* to stop abortions.
Except, of course, the One True Way to stop many of them -- start supporting/adopting/caretaking the resulting children. But that will never happen.

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

No. They fail totally at putting their money where their mouths are in regards to taking care of unwanted babies, or babies the mother and/or father can't care for. They fail at supporting national health care so that families can care for babies with health or other special needs.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Or the Other True Way to stop them--making sure that every child conceived is wanted before conception occurs.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

"I'm tired of campaigns for rights that seek to do so on the back of denying other rights."

Jesus with a lighthouse. This argument is used to support depriving every "out" group of their rights. Making it illegal to refuse to rent to [insert ethnic group here] deprives landlords of their right. Making it illegal for restaurants to refuse to serve blacks deprives the restaurant owners of their rights. Legalizing same-sex marriage deprives Xtian city clerks of their right to act in accordance with their religious beliefs. Allowing gays to serve in the military deprives homophobic soldiers of their right not to feel nervous. On and on ad infinitum. It's bogus for all those other cases, too.

In every case where a group of people finally gained the legal and civil rights that all residents of the United States should have, people who formerly discriminated against them have to suck it up. That's not depriving bigots of their rights, unless they have a "right" to define other people as less than human. Which they don't.

[mdlbear]

Well said, Cat! Thank you!

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Ex-frigging-actly.

If the requirements of your job violate your moral beliefs, talk to your boss about assigning you to another position. Or actually demonstrate some real moral courage and quit.

Or, and here's a truly radical idea:
Do. The job. You're getting paid. To do.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I once wrote a paper on the difference between terrorism and satyagraha. Essentially, the latter is a way of making the statement, "our beliefs are so important that we are willing to suffer and die for them." The former is a way of making the statement, "our beliefs are so important that we are willing to force other people to suffer and die for them."

Guess which one gets the moral high ground?

Pro-life doctors who choose specialties less to their personal preference in order to avoid any risk of being expected to perform abortions are choosing a form of satyagraha, and I can honor them for the choice even while disagreeing with them that their anti-abortion beliefs have a basis in fact. They are taking suffering, in a limited fashion, upon themselves for the sake of their beliefs, rather than putting it on anyone else.

Pro-life doctors who try to keep their positions, refuse to do the work required by those positions, draw their paychecks, and live well off them while blocking women's access to other doctors are taking the terrorist position: "what I believe is so important that everyone else should suffer until they yield to it." They get roughly as much respect from me as do any other terrorists.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I like this idea of satyagraha.

[carolf.livejournal.com]

Me, too.

The definition of terrorism ain't bad, either.

Lots of food for thought, here.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Just saying that I like that distinction between terrorism and satyagraha (and I had never heard of the latter word). Short, to the point and memorable. Thanks.

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

(clapping enthusiastically with little Miles-hands) Cat, you're a genius. I'm proud to know you!

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Text of the proposed regulations (PDF). Unfortunately, the laws are in fact on the books. But, had these regulations been promulgated before the Roberts Court, both law and regulation would likely have been overturned. (That is probably why this has not come up before; the Church amendments date to the 1970s.) Now, the Court's conservatives may find a way to sustain them. I don't think we are going to be able to stop this before the next administration. It's bad law from the viewpoint of hospital management, as well, with the potential of creating enormous conflicts within hospital staff. It's been a whole generation since women in the USA have died in large numbers from self-induced abortions, or gone through the heartbreak of giving a child away out of desperation. I think we are about to get some hard reminders.

[vesta-aurelia.livejournal.com]

The nasty little head games of "pregnancy always good, whether or not you can support it" and "you must ALWAYS keep your baby, or you're not a real woman" have been subtly incultured for almost two decades. How long do you think it will take to root them out?

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

They're older than that, of course, so I suppose they'll be around for a while. Some women will feel guilty, no matter how the culture changes. On the other hand, it seems already to be the case that most women who have abortions feel little guilt, despite all claims to the contrary. So this may not be a major problem.

[carolf.livejournal.com]

I have no statistics in either direction; I have only anecdotal evidence.

I know no woman who, having had an abortion, does not feel some guilt.

None of them regret the decision -- it was neither easy, nor quickly made, but it was made for reasons that led to that decision, and thus is not regretted. That the decision was necessary ... yeah, that they regret.

Two of them were on birth control when they got pregnant. Only one was not married to the father. All of them had children later; some of them before, as well.

There *are* those women, particularly younger women, who think of abortion as a means of birth control. I think they are deeply in error, and need some serious education. But I havne't met them, personally.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I suspect "those women" are mythical, or at least fairly unusual. See also Avedon's remarks.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

There *are* those women, particularly younger women, who think of abortion as a means of birth control.

I've never met one. And I will say that what I've heard of abortion makes it sound unpleasant--better than the alternative, sure, but not the sort of thing one would repeat because one couldn't be bothered to use birth control.

I suppose it could be possible that there are women like this, but it seems unlikely.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I remember reading that many women who have unintended pregnancies, and due to being in a social and financial condition which makes keeping a child not feasible, and who therefore give babies that they have come to love up for adoption end up with pretty much the same psychological scarring as rape victims. The book I was reading didn't even go into all the physical/hormonal ways that a healthy woman's body can start the bonding process even before birth. Nor did it look at how a woman's body can be changed, damaged, or permanently scarred from a pregnancy. This book only looked at the psychological aftermath of young women who had healthy pregnancies and gave their children up for adoption.

This is one of many parts of this complex issue that pro-life people ignore. They say "you can give it up for adoption" as if giving up a child is an insignificant act. (Similarly, they act as if 9 months of being pregnant, followed by giving birth, is simple and easy and risk-free.)

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

A few years back, Avedon Carol commented, "Look, pretty much everyone I know who has had an abortion regards it as a sad time in their life, but they chose it as the best of a bad bunch of choices. No one I know who put a child up for adoption has ever stopped grieving over it." It might be worth doing a literature survey on this (but I'm not going to do it right now); there might be more studies that make the case. Such facts don't add much to the basics of the issue, but they can persuade the uncertain.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I have also heard that having a baby and giving it up for adoption can cause regret that lasts for decades.

Plus, it's routine for women to be depressed after giving birth; it's called post-partum depression and I think it occurs in about 25% of cases.

[occams_pyramid]

There are people who believe that blood transfusions are wrong. Would it be acceptable for them to train to be a doctor but then to refuse life-saving transfusions to a stranger because of their own religious beliefs?

I don't personally think it's because they hate women (and of course some of them are women). It's more that they want to control everyone and make the world run according to their own internal fantasy world. Controlling sex in all sorts of ways has always been a major tool of this.

And then anyone who objects to this is of course EVIL!!!! and so is hated. And you can use any tactics against them, you don't have to deal with them fairly. After all they're evil.

So the hate is I think more a product than a cause.

As has been said many times before, the insistence on the right to life of a blob of undifferentiated cells is oddly at variance with the same peoples' attitudes to the right to life later on, such as access to medical treatment etc.

I don't know the details of the churches in the US (and don't want to) but the Church of England is currently tearing itself in two over the question of whether women and homosexuals should be regarded as real human beings. The Catholic church doesn't have this problem - it knows for certain that women are not. And then they claim moral superiority as automatic. And then they insist that I must 'respect' them and their beliefs. If a bunch of men who absolutely exclude women from power decide to forcibly impose their religious beliefs on women - even women who are not of their religion! - comfortable in the certainty that they themselves are never going to need an abortion, then I do NOT respect their 'right' to do that.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. Neither do I, as is probably obvious by now :-)

[occams_pyramid]

Oh, and another thought. From what I've heard about the 'pro-life' lot I get the distinct impression that some of them are quite likely to conceal their beliefs and deliberately get jobs at clinics which provide abortions, before announcing that they refuse to do so (and cannot be fired). But this is purely my own impression, from a long distance away.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Cat, thank you for saying it more clearly than I could. As usual.

The thing that gets me about the comments you quote, as I said over in mine, is that I could practically have scripted them. The commenter doesn't believe in the core ideas that we know prompted this measure, but if our lot are objecting to it he's derned well gonna defend it, because that's what he does. And it probably isn't the automatic, knee-jerk mechanism that it looks like to me, but it's really hard to tell when it pops up every time regular as Old Faithful.

*sigh* and that's probably what I look like from the other side. Maybe I go back to bed.

[maiac.livejournal.com]

I know people who have worked at clinics that provide abortions. Every one of them has said that some of the same people who stand outside the clinic yelling "Murderer! Murderer!" at the patients have themselves come in for abortions, or brought their daughters, and in every case they've said words to the effect of, "But my case is different, it's not my fault I'm pregnant!" Which is revealing on so many levels, and not in a good way.

And in every case, the clinic employees comply with the requirements of their job by protecting these hypocrites' privacy. Which shows that they have a better understanding of morality than the grandstanders on the sidewalk.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

Thank you, Cat, for an outstanding essay. I would only add one small, but I think key, point.

I disagree with those who believe that life begins at conception. I oppose those who want to deny women the ability to choose abortion. I have utter contempt for those who want to deny women the ability to choose abortion, *and* who want to make birth control unavailable. Don't try to tell me that your primary aim isn't to control women's bodies (and everyone's sexuality), then make it harder to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

(Oh, and I fully agree with the notion that consciousness is what makes us human. My biggest problem with Roe v. Wade is that, given the constantly advancing state of medical technology, "viability" is a moving target. Here's crazy idea: How about if we base the cut-off point on a fetal EEG? If there's higher brain activity, it's human.)

[antongarou.livejournal.com]

*applause*
Also, as someone who had some college-level math and philosophy of science and liked to have logical debates way before that I consider "Fisking" to be one of my favorite forms of debate.Not least of all because I can see the point and the rebuttal all in one.

[carolf.livejournal.com]

I agree with both you and your friend (whose essay I also read.)

I agree with your friend that a principle is a principle. In this case, my principle is that everyone in this country is free to follow his/her own conscience. It doesn't matter whether or not someone's conscience is to follow a principle I do not follow. If I think it ok for pro-choice protesters to protest, then it's ok for anti-abortion folks to protest, too. Goose, gander.

I agree with you, however, that my principle does not leave room for someone to force me to follow their conscience.

Where I think I agree with both of you (you because you said so, and your friend because what I know of that friend tells me we agree here -- and I could be wrong on both counts...) is that everyone is equally responsible for the consequences of following their conscience. I'm with Thoreau: if you wish to protest a law by refusing to follow it, be prepared to go to jail unless and until you manage to change the law.

I don't agree wtih you that all ob/gyns must provide abortion services because of the nature of their specialty. I would agree that each individual doctor has the right to decide how to conduct his/her practice. If that means not performing abortions, then that doctor does not provide that service.

However, a doctor in his/her own practice is not the same as a doctor in the employ of someone else. If the doctor is an employee of the clinic, and the clinic offers abortion, then the employee is required to follow the job description of the job he/she contracted to do, and that could well include abortion.

And this is where the proposed law shocks me -- the folks that normally want government to stay out of Business's business, unless it means money for Business -- suddenly want to impose a law telling Business how to conduct its business. Cognative disonance, indeed.

So I agree with both of you; but as usually happens in discussions, I think both of you said some things a bit more broadly than you intended.

Or not.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I think you've just about summed up my position.

If a doctor or a surgery or a hospital wants to say that they will not perform certain operations, that's their right. If a Moslem or Jew doesn't want to handle pork no one has any right to force them to do so even it it will save a life (I don't know if there are any medicines made from pigs, but there could be). It is the right of others to not give them money for services they aren't performing, however (including state funds).

If a person or organisation has made a contract that they /will/ do something, though, and they then decide for whatever reason (conscience, religion, time, finance, whatever) that they won't do it, then they have broken the contract and have to take the consequences. So if a doctor signs a contract saying that they will perform abortions, and then refuses to do it (or even they took the employment with no intention of doing it, as others have said happens) they should be sacked just like any other employee who breaks their contract of employment.

Yes, there is a possible 'out' for them if they really do get 'converted'. Just like a person on the meat counter at a supermarket who turns vegan, they can ask their employerfor a different position where they don't have to do that job. The employer shouldn't have to find that, though, if there are no openings then the employer still has only the choices of do the job or quit (or refuse and be sacked). And note that there is plenty more to ob/gyn than performing abortions, and that even if a person is opposed to abortion they may well still have the compassion to do aftercare for those who have had them.

As I understand it (IANAL, nor an American, nor have I read the proposed legislation, only read about it in blogs and media sources) the big problem with this law is that it takes away the freedom of the employer to get rid of an employee who refuses to do their job. And that it even makes it impossible for the employer to write into their contracts that this job must be done. Bad, bad legislation. If this were tried in Hollywood (you have to employ an actor even if they refuse to act in certain films) the industry would be up in arms. Or any other industry ("I won't work on tanks." "But our firm is making only military vehicles!"). Somehow they get away with it in medicine because of the religious pressure.

(Oh, there's also the bad legislation which equates any form of interventive contraception (i.e. everything except abstinence) with abortion. I have seen conflicting reports as to whether that is part of the same package, but wherever it is I am unconditionally opposed to it. I completely agree with the people who have pointed out that taking away both contraception an abortion is an attack on women. It's like taking away both brakes and seatbelts from a car, and then saying that whatever happens is the driver's fault so no one is allowed to pull them from the wreckage. I know, let's do that with vaccinations and post-infection cures, if you got infected it was your own fault, really go back to the middle ages [er, that's sarcasm, just in case some readers don't spot that]...)

[spiritdancer]

(I don't know if there are any medicines made from pigs, but there could be)

Replacement heart valves (not medicine, exactly, but same idea)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Thanks, yes, it's the same principle.

[carolf.livejournal.com]

insulin. Usually from pigs -- closest to human.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I thought of insulin, but thought it was from sheep...

[spiritdancer]

Actually, in the last 3 or 4 years all the beef and pork insulins have been discontinued, as human recombinant insulin has taken over the market (and since it's human, the issues of people making antibodies against injected insulin have presumably gone down).

It's been a problem on the veterinary side, as pork insulin was one of the better ones for cats, and Humulin (and its analogs) don't work as well.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

It also opens up all kinds of troublesome legal possibilities; if an anti-abortion ob/gyn is not hired or fired, could they sue, and claim it was a result of prejudice? I think so. As if that were not enough, what happens if a woman is harmed because her doctor refuses to recommend an abortion? The law does not prevent malpractice suits and the whole mess would land in court. No positive outcome seems possible; either the court rules in favor of medical practices which endanger the lives of women--which seems unlikely--or the court rules that doctors in that situation are obliged to advise abortion in some circumstances, which would make into law what is now only medical practice, and would certainly earn much opprobium from anti-abortion groups. I propose a variant of Hippocrates rule for legislators: in your law-making, do not make matters worse.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

As far as I can see it is indeed part of "anti-discrimination" type legislation, or can be easily construed to be such. And there lies another fine edge: where is the line between firing a person for refusing to do $(thing_against_their_religion) and firing them because they can't do the job due to disability?

"what happens if a woman is harmed because her doctor refuses to recommend an abortion?"

Hmm. Is a doctor required to suggest all possible alternatives? That certainly isn't the case in the UK, where doctors can (and often do) refuse to recommend various forms of 'alternative' medicine (i.e. ones they don't get paid for) and even refuse to suggest some medicines because they are too expensive (the NHS and government even support that).

I like your Hippocratic Oath for lawmakers, unfortunately they already have their own Hypocritical rules which they prefer...

('Hippocracy' -- government by horses of the Yahoos...)

Short comment about Judaism

[moshez.livejournal.com]

If it is to save a life, a Jew is required to do whatever it takes bar three things -- worship false Gods, commit incest or kill another. Nobody who claims to be an observant Jew can rightly refuse to handle pork if it means saving a life. Not that it has anything to do with your argument, just fixing one example.

Re: Short comment about Judaism

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Thank you for clearing this up.

[callibr8]

I'm VERY impressed with your thoughtful, thorough rebuttal of this. Thanks for writing it. Hope you don't mind if I reference it in a post I'm making, to help spread the word about this travesty of justice.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I've already commented on that post before I saw this response, but for the record--I'm glad you like it, of course you may reference it, and thank you for your interest and support.