Adrienne's Corner

Health Highlights: Jan. 17, 2009
Posted January 17, 2009



'Conscience Rule' Gets Legal Challenge

The Conscience Rule, one of the last items on President George W. Bush's health agenda, has been challenged in U.S. District Court.

The Washington Post reports that a lawsuit was filed Jan. 15 in Connecticut by that state's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, seeking to block a new federal regulation that protects health workers if they refuse to perform medical services to which they object. The rule went into effect in December.

Blumenthal's suit included the states of California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island, the Post reported. Separate lawsuits were also filed by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.

Planned Parenthood and ACLU - why am I not surprised?

Central to the Conscience Rule, the newspaper reports, is that it stops federal funding to any health organization -- public or private -- if it doesn't allow health professionals the right to refuse to perform or take part in any health care services they consider objectionable on ethical, moral or religious grounds.

So what they're saying is the only people that have a right to decide what you may or may not do, are the purveyors of abortions and euthanasia.

"On the way out, the Bush administration has left a ticking political time bomb that is set to explode literally on the day of the president's [Barack Obama] inaugural, and blow apart women's rights," the newspaper quotes Blumenthal as saying.

Just exactly how is that going to "blow apart" women's rights? If the doctor or hospital doesn't perform her abortion she can just go somewhere else. This is typical of the liberal mind-set which demands that you do what they want and respect what they see as their rights. How's that for tolerance?

Rebecca Ayer, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told the Post that HHS would defend its actions in court. "The department followed appropriate procedures to put the regulation in place, and the regulation is fully supported by law," the newspaper quotes her as saying.

There is no doubt in my mind that Obambi will overturn this. All of you Bush haters out there listen up. Once again our departing President has tried to do the right thing only to be mocked and misrepresented by the main stream media. Do you think for one minute these media elites do this because they "care" about you? I've got news for you. They laugh at middle America and at what they consider to be our outdated ideas of morality.