President Obama takes first steps to remove the harmful 'provider refusal' regulation imposed by his predecessor
According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, The Hill's Congress Blog, "the Bush administration's provider 'conscience' rule, which would have allowed nearly any employee in a federally funded health care setting to refuse to provide information, referrals or access to a range of health care services simply by claiming a religious objection."
While President Obama has taken the all-important first steps to overturning the Bush administration's harmful rule, the process for undoing the rule is exasperatingly long and tortuous. Planned Parenthood points out that:
In order to overturn the Bush administration rule, President Obama has to allow the public to comment on what he plans to do. That is where YOU come in. It is important that we show the administration that we support the president’s proposal. Take Action Add your name to the list of people who support reversing Bush’s dangerous rule. |
The long-threatened attaqck on women's reproductive health care was ultimately imposed with the promulgation of the "provider refusal rule" [AKA 'conscience clause'] literally in the last hours Bush administration. As anticipated, the newly elected President Obama moved expeditiously to reverse this harmful restriction on delivery of reproductive health care to needy American families.
Couched as a mechanism to 'protect' health care workers with religious objections to abortion, there is little doubt that the real target of this rule was birth control. As promulgated in late January 2009 the provider refusal rule fails to define the term abortion, inviting individuals to define it in ways that encompass contraception. The ultimate result would be barriers to women’s access to contraceptive services. The National Partnership blog continues by saying that the rule would have put real obstacles in the path of those most in need of subsidized family planning services: low-income women without private insurance who are seeking to avoid unintended pregnancy.
This page last updated March 8, 2009 6:52 .