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The 30-Day Comment Period is Still Open
If you're American, care about women's rights, and have not yet emailed or written, the 30-day comment period on the Department of Health and Human Services Proposed Regulation Ensuring that DHHS Funds Do Not Support Coercive or Discriminatory Policies is still open. (HTML version here.)
I have talked about this before.
There have been many responses to this. None of them include a precise example of what health care would be like under this rule - so today I'm going further back in my posts to show you the future Leavitt envisions: the saga of Neil T. Noeson.
In April of 2005, the State of Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board reprimanded him and limited Noeson's license. This was in response to the fact that Noeson had not informed his employer of his objections to providing birth control, which ultimately led to his being the only pharmacist on duty one day, refusing birth control to a patient, refusing to refer her elsewhere, and refusing to pass on the prescription to the next pharmacist she found. She sued. He hid behind the very conscience clause that Leavitt proposes. The Pharmacy Board concluded (emphasis added):
The Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board has never held that a pharmacist is not entitled to exercise his or her conscience in the practice of his or her profession, nor is Respondent’s exercise of conscience the basis for prosecution of this case. Rather, this case is about following professional standards in the exercise of one’s conscience. This, Respondent failed to do. The discipline recommended in this Order is a consequence of Respondent’s failure to act as a professional. The Respondent is not being sanctioned for exercising his conscience. Rather, he is being held accountable, as would any other registered pharmacist, for engaging in a practice that departed from the standards of care that govern his profession.
Page 9 of Leavitt's proposed regulation whines the standards of professional organizations have been used to define the exercise of conscience to be unprofessional. Read that again, in conjunction with what the Board actually said. (And note that at no point in Leavitt's regulation mentions standards of care or patients' rights.)
This is not the end of the Noeson story. He went to a different pharmacy, one which had other pharmacists on staff to help women wanting birth control, even having a separate basket for such drugs so he didn't have to touch him... but he refused to talk to women who asked at the desk, refused to tell anyone else they were there, and even refused to answer the telephone lest he be asked about birth control. Unable to deal with that amount of refusal to do his damn job, they fired him.
He sued them over the very conscience clauses Leavitt cites as current legal precedent.
He lost the first case. He appealed. In April 2007, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago handed him his ass on a platter. The very regulation that Leavitt suggests is reasonable and right a Chicago court finds "would impose an undue hardship... an accommodation that requires other employees to assume a disproportionate workload (or divert them from their regular work) is an undue hardship as a matter of law." (page 4 of the pdf)
Leavitt keeps talking about the hot topic of abortion (limiting of which he apparently considers "an important and legitimate social statement".) Noeson refused BIRTH CONTROL, something the vast majority of American women use. He refused to tell his own supervisors what duties he would or would not perform. He prejudged and refused to serve women. He refused to answer the fucking phone in case he had to hear something he didn't want to hear!
THIS is what DHHS thinks "nondescrimination" looks like. This is the test case of what the DHHS wants to make legal, acceptable, and praiseworthy behavior. If you think this is not the sort of "caring service" that you, your mother, your sisters, your wife, and your daughters should be subjected to, if you don't want to see the floodgates opened to yet more normal and needed services reclassified as "objectionable," then WRITE NOW!
Your voice DOES make a difference. Under the stewardship of Leavitt, the DHHS has also come up with such nonsense as assuming and treating all women as if they are "pre-pregnant" and redefining all forms of birth control equaling abortion. Both of these bits of utter nonsense were shot down as regulations after sustained public outcry (as you can imagine, due to some 98% of American women using birth control at one point or another). This is yet another attempt to get the same notion across, and even if we can't get the notion that women have rights through Leavitt's pointy head, we can make sure that his personal bigotry does not become Government regulation.
I have talked about this before.
There have been many responses to this. None of them include a precise example of what health care would be like under this rule - so today I'm going further back in my posts to show you the future Leavitt envisions: the saga of Neil T. Noeson.
In April of 2005, the State of Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board reprimanded him and limited Noeson's license. This was in response to the fact that Noeson had not informed his employer of his objections to providing birth control, which ultimately led to his being the only pharmacist on duty one day, refusing birth control to a patient, refusing to refer her elsewhere, and refusing to pass on the prescription to the next pharmacist she found. She sued. He hid behind the very conscience clause that Leavitt proposes. The Pharmacy Board concluded (emphasis added):
The Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board has never held that a pharmacist is not entitled to exercise his or her conscience in the practice of his or her profession, nor is Respondent’s exercise of conscience the basis for prosecution of this case. Rather, this case is about following professional standards in the exercise of one’s conscience. This, Respondent failed to do. The discipline recommended in this Order is a consequence of Respondent’s failure to act as a professional. The Respondent is not being sanctioned for exercising his conscience. Rather, he is being held accountable, as would any other registered pharmacist, for engaging in a practice that departed from the standards of care that govern his profession.
Page 9 of Leavitt's proposed regulation whines the standards of professional organizations have been used to define the exercise of conscience to be unprofessional. Read that again, in conjunction with what the Board actually said. (And note that at no point in Leavitt's regulation mentions standards of care or patients' rights.)
This is not the end of the Noeson story. He went to a different pharmacy, one which had other pharmacists on staff to help women wanting birth control, even having a separate basket for such drugs so he didn't have to touch him... but he refused to talk to women who asked at the desk, refused to tell anyone else they were there, and even refused to answer the telephone lest he be asked about birth control. Unable to deal with that amount of refusal to do his damn job, they fired him.
He sued them over the very conscience clauses Leavitt cites as current legal precedent.
He lost the first case. He appealed. In April 2007, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago handed him his ass on a platter. The very regulation that Leavitt suggests is reasonable and right a Chicago court finds "would impose an undue hardship... an accommodation that requires other employees to assume a disproportionate workload (or divert them from their regular work) is an undue hardship as a matter of law." (page 4 of the pdf)
Leavitt keeps talking about the hot topic of abortion (limiting of which he apparently considers "an important and legitimate social statement".) Noeson refused BIRTH CONTROL, something the vast majority of American women use. He refused to tell his own supervisors what duties he would or would not perform. He prejudged and refused to serve women. He refused to answer the fucking phone in case he had to hear something he didn't want to hear!
THIS is what DHHS thinks "nondescrimination" looks like. This is the test case of what the DHHS wants to make legal, acceptable, and praiseworthy behavior. If you think this is not the sort of "caring service" that you, your mother, your sisters, your wife, and your daughters should be subjected to, if you don't want to see the floodgates opened to yet more normal and needed services reclassified as "objectionable," then WRITE NOW!
Your voice DOES make a difference. Under the stewardship of Leavitt, the DHHS has also come up with such nonsense as assuming and treating all women as if they are "pre-pregnant" and redefining all forms of birth control equaling abortion. Both of these bits of utter nonsense were shot down as regulations after sustained public outcry (as you can imagine, due to some 98% of American women using birth control at one point or another). This is yet another attempt to get the same notion across, and even if we can't get the notion that women have rights through Leavitt's pointy head, we can make sure that his personal bigotry does not become Government regulation.
Whoa...
Re: Whoa...
Re: Whoa...
Also, your email to Hallmark? Work of beauty.
I'm hopeful for you re: National Board in November.
Re: Whoa...
#2. Thanks. Too bad, apparenlty, they didn't actually go through. Gr.
#3. Thanks. You'll hear me screaming for joy or crying from whereever you are when the results come out. :)
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This is beyond so amazingly wrong.
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Course, that wasn't as horrifying to me as listening to my birthmother last summer tell me that she thinks the war in Iraq is for the purpose of providing a distraction so that no one attacks the U.S. (which I can see as part of the reasoning) and that (here's the part that almost made me leave the room) she thought that was fine and dandy because our children are "more important" than their children and so it was OKAY for their children and people to die. I disagreed, stammering, and staring with a, "I cannot BELIEVE I just heard ANYONE--let alone someone with whom I share DNA--say that."
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Oh, Leavitt and his religious masters have done a brilliant job of framing. It's all about hurting the widdle feelings of the caregivers... and never about the care they're not giving, the rights of their own patients, or even (as the Noeson story points out) the rights of their employees and coworkers.
If your conscience won't let you answer the damn phone or talk to people who are right in front of you, then you should not be in that job. PERIOD. The "debate" has to be yanked back from people insisting that they just want their rights to pointing out all the other people's rights who are infringed.
Your birthmother isn't the only one with that appalling view either; I've heard it before. It's as if they believe that there is a finite number of terrorists and we can hunt them down, instead of maybe our own policies creating several new generations of terrorists with very personal reasons to strike against us.
Not to mention Spain and England maybe having a few things to say about the "if they're tied up in a war, they can't strike again" mindset.
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Refusing to answer the phone is a bit over the top. I'm going to go away and swear.
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I think the Noeson story is very important to get out because it's not a "what if" story that can be handwaved as "hysterical." It's an account of exactly how far one person has taken his objections, all of which would be permissible according to the proposed regulation.
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And here's my 'conscientious objection': I hate guns and believe that they should be banned, so does that mean I, if I were a member of a medical profession, should have the right to refuse to treat a gunshot victim?
This is not only ridiculous (and leaving the door open to all sorts of other 'conscientious objections', such as not treating gays or black people or anyone whose politics you disagree with), but it's appallingly sexist and will impact most those women who already have the least choice in their lives. Me, I've got a relatively good income and if my local pharmacist was an 'objector' I'd just drive somewhere else. Women on no or low incomes don't have that choice.
This sucks. Good luck making sure it doesn't happen!
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Or their lifestyle (single women with pregnancies) or their religion... It's the top of a very slippery slope indeed, and that Leavitt wants to be able to take Government money while not providing equal services for all is the real kicker for this.
It's not even as if there aren't alternatives - there's a "pro-life pharmacy" downtown that provides everything BUT family planning counseling and meds. But that's not enough.
I keep thinking - the March for Women's Lives was the biggest rally EVER held on the Mall. In all the pictures of all the events down there, you've never seen such a crowd of people. And yet it's as if that never happened. As if tax money could and should be used to pay people who discriminate.
A complete stranger has to say:
It looks like there was a proposed bill (http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2003/data/AB-63.pdf) before the Wisconsin legislature in 2003 that would have gotten people like this guy off the hook, but it does not seem to have passed (http://www.legis.state.wi.us/2003/data/AB63hst.html), fortunately.
Re: A complete stranger has to say:
I didn't know about the bill. I'm glad it didn't pass.
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To all concerned,
Regarding the act, "Ensuring that Department of Health and Human Services Funds
Do Not Support Coercive or Discriminatory Policies or Practices In Violation of
Federal Law"
All I want to say is that, if a bank teller one day decided that it against his
conscience to fulfill a bank customer's request for funds from their own account,
that bank teller would be fired.
If ANY person, hired to do a JOB, suddenly decided it was "Against their personal
moral code" to DO that job, be it a ditch-digger, street crossing guard for
a school, white collar, blue collar, NO Collar...
They would be FIRED. It is not being coerced, they were HIRED to perform a particular
service, duty, or action, which they CHOSE, and for which they have trained. To
NOT perform that action as expected and paid for by the employer, is grounds for
dismissal. It is not "Discrimination", or "Coercion" or any
other exercise of force on that person.
To give protections such as are outlined in this proposal to persons in the medical
field, is just ASKING for our hospitals, clinics and other such medical practices
to suddenly be overwhelmed with lawsuits and litigation from anyone they have ever
fired with cause.
Does the Department of Health and Human Services REALLY want to start such a colossal
traffic jam in our courts? Do they REALLY want to tie up huge amount of resources
they can ill afford in proving that the funding granted to this or that medical
professional, was or was not used in the performing of some task for which the plaintiff
declined to perform and was subsequently dismissed from their DUTIES?
I should hope not, there are far more important matters to attend to in the world
and in this nation.
Respectfully yours,
(Name redacted)