�California Attorney General Jerry Brown (D) and some family planning advocates on Wednesday said that a draft HHS regulation would prohibit the state from enforcing the state law requiring insurance coverage for birth control to women, the San Francisco Chronicle reports (Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, 8/21). Also on Wednesday, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and MoveOn.org Political Action submitted a petition with more than 325,000 signatures urgency HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt to pull back the draft rule from consideration, ABC News reports (Barrett, ABC News, 8/20).
According to the Chronicle, the administration drafted the proposal to implement laws prohibiting recipients of federal cash in hand from penalizing health practitioners who reject to perform abortions or provide abortion referrals (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/21). At the news conference announcing the request, Ellen Golombek, PPAF vice president of external affairs, said the draft regulation "would allow providers to withhold critical health upkeep information without telling their patients." According to ABC News, other advocates illustrious that the draft "muddies the line between miscarriage and contraception, and look at it an opening for health attention providers to more oftentimes refuse to prescribe birth control and other forms of contraception and point of accumulation women's health care options" (ABC News, 8/20).
The leaked draft principle defines abortion as "whatsoever of the various procedures -- including the prescription and governance of whatever drug or the performance of whatever procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of the life sentence of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after nidation" - a definition of abortion that could include many forms of hormonal contraception and intrauterine devices. (Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 8/11).
Brown in an Aug. 4 letter to Leavitt wrote, "By financially punishing noncompliant states with the personnel casualty of (federal) funding, the regulation would intrude on the government agency of states to reenact and enforce laws that ensure women's access to birth control." California's practice of law, which was passed in 2000 and upheld by the state Supreme Court in 2004, was passed in response to the decision by some indemnity companies to cover male infertility drugs but not oral contraception for women. The legal philosophy exempts church building employees, just the land Supreme Court ruled that the criterion applies to the 52,000 employees of Catholic hospitals and 1,600 employees of Catholic Charities.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by Catholic Charities on the California opinion and a similar ruling by the New York Supreme Court. Twenty-five states have torah similar to California's measure, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
If the draft HHS regulation is enacted, it would be a "monster step down a road that volition potentially leave women with a major loss of access to contraceptive methods," Kathy Kneer, CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, aforementioned. She added that opponents of the rule volition continue spur members of Congress and federal officials to plosive it from being issued, adding that if they fail they will inquire the succeeding president to repeal the rule (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/21).
Leavitt in an Aug. 7 web log entry said he has ordered the draft regulation to be rewritten with a narrow focus on allowing health care workers to refuse to participate in procedures they receive objectionable. He also aforementioned that HHS is "still contemplating if it will issue a regulation or not. If it does, it testament be direct focused on the shelter of practitioner conscience." However, Leavitt did not say what he meant by "practitioner sense of right and wrong" or the extent to which the protection would allow health care workers to refuse services (Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 8/11).
David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical and Dental Associations, said many of the group's 15,000 members have been denied jobs or promotions for refusing to perform abortions or prescribe contraceptives that they believe ar the eq of abortion. "There is an organized effort to force health care professionals to do things that violate their conscience," Stevens said. According to the Chronicle, the proposed ruler is backed by some other religious organizations opposed to abortion, and it is opposed by the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and cl members of Congress, including Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) (San Francisco Chronicle, 8/21).
Reprinted with tolerant permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.
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