Abortion limitations on the line
President Bush’s administration is trying to secure them. President-elect Obama’s transition team is preparing to strike them down swiftly.
It’s a clash of worldviews over what constitutes human rights, and what is worth protecting.
The outgoing Bush administration this week will finalize a regulation establishing a “right of conscience” allowing medical staff to refuse to participate in any practice they object to on moral grounds, including abortion but possibly birth control and other health care as well.
In transition offices across town, officials in the incoming Obama administration have begun considering how and when to undo it.
The regulation is one of a swath of abortion and other reproductive-health issues under review by the Obama team, which is preparing to reverse a variety of Bush measures, according to officials close to the transition. The review is part of a sweeping scrutiny of Bush-era legislation and regulation on issues across the federal government, from environmental and labor rules to defense spending.
First of all, abortion is not reproductive health. It’s time we use words clearly to mean what they say.
Furthermore, the incoming administration is poised to make this one of Obama’s first acts, placing a high priority on unfettered access to abortion and contraception. And on how we even think about them from an early school age.
Decisions that the new administration will weigh include: whether to cut funding for sexual abstinence programs; whether to increase funding for comprehensive sex education programs that include discussion of birth control; whether to allow federal health plans to pay for abortions; and whether to overturn regulations such as one that makes fetuses eligible for health-care coverage under the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Calling children in the womb “fetuses” depersonalizes and dehumanizes them, making it all the easier to deny them coverage and protection.
Women’s health advocates are also pushing for a change in rules that would lower the cost of birth control at college health clinics.
Why are activists pushing birth control on college campuses called “women’s health advocates”?
Many other questions are lining up on both sides, over social and moral issues.
Among them is the “right of conscience” regulation that is expected to be published this week. It will take effect 30 days after being issued. That means that if the Bush administration issues the regulation this week, it will become final before Mr. Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20, and his administration won’t be able to undo it easily.
True women’s and reproductive health advocates certainly hope he will not, at all.
