A new federal regulation attacking patients’ rights, affecting primarily women’s ability to govern their own bodies, has become effective just as the Obama administration takes office.
|
Medical practitioners were already entitled not to perform any procedure that they opposed based on their personal beliefs rather than sound medicine. With the new regulation, they are not even required to inform patients that those procedures are an option.
Additionally, nearly everyone from the surgeon down to the person cleaning surgical instruments now holds the power to deny patients the care they need. Because the law applies to any entity that receives federal funding—nearly 600,000 total, including hospitals, doctors’ offices and pharmacies—the rights of the patient have been effectively eviscerated.
This reactionary offensive by the Bush administration was designed to slip under the popular radar, going into effect in the wee hours between the outgoing and incoming administrations.
The regulation is a major revocation of basic rights. It will create significant obstacles to providing many essential health services, including abortion, emergency contraception for rape victims, family planning, infertility treatment and end-of-life care.
The Bush administration has a solid history of attacks on women’s rights. In 2003, his administration signed into law a ban on a second-trimester abortion procedure, criminalizing doctors who performed it even if the woman’s life was at risk. In 2004, the Bush administration played a key role in the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to keep Plan B, an emergency contraceptive, available through prescription only. Plan B, known as the “morning-after pill,” is most effective when taken within 72 hours after unprotected sexual intercourse.
Women’s lives at risk
“In just a matter of months, the Bush administration has undone three decades of protections for both medical professionals and their patients,” said Nancy Northrup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It replaced them with a policy that seriously risks the health of millions of women, then tried to pass it off as benevolent.”
The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association opposed implementation of the regulation, as did Planned Parenthood and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The ACOG cited four major examples of needless and extreme patient suffering at the hands of the “conscience” regulations that existed previously as evidence that further regulations cannot be anything but detrimental to patient safety. One case cited involved the denial of emergency contraception to a rape victim; another, the denial of emergency contraception to a 42-year-old mother; a third, the denial of artificial insemination to a lesbian couple; and the final example, the denial of an early-stage abortion to a 19-year-old girl with a life-threatening embolism.
Clearly, the implications of this ruling are far-reaching. Judith Waxman from the National Women’s Law Center told the L.A. Times on Dec. 2, 2008: “This goes way beyond abortion. … This kind of rule could wreak havoc in a hospital if any employee can declare they are not willing to do certain parts of their job.”
There are mutterings from various components of the Democratic Party that they will try to overturn this ruling under the Obama presidency. In the best-case scenario, a revocation could easily take months to achieve through bureaucratic channels. Progressive forces must organize to demand an immediate halt to the implementation of this reactionary regulation.
Women’s oppression is an inherent feature of the capitalist system. Women continue to hold second-tier standing in U.S. society, evidenced both by their making $0.77 to the male-earned dollar in 2007 and their decades-long struggle to gain—and keep—control over their own bodies.
In the event that the ruling is overturned by the Obama administration, such a victory will only hold fast if the people unite their voices in a resounding demand for full and immediate reproductive rights. This includes not only the legal right to care, but access to it. Millions of women are still denied the care they need because it is unavailable or unaffordable.
Women have struggled for equal access to health care since before the 19th century. Victory against sexism will not come from the bourgeois U.S. government, but rather through a militant and indefatigable movement of women activists and their progressive allies.
