Despite a public outcry, which included over 325,000 signatures on a petition, the Bush administration moved forward this past week with new Health and Human Services regulations that deliberately confuse birth control with abortion. The new regulations, according to women's health advocates, leave the definition of birth control open to the individual interpretation by medical service providers that could allow some to discriminate against women seeking birth control services.
Women's health care advocates believe that the new Bush administration rules, proposed by Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt earlier this month, could allow some health service providers to refuse to give women patients or clients full disclosure about all of their health care options when it comes to birth control, undermining both scientifically accepted birth control treatments and the doctor-patient relationship.
In a teleconference with reporters last week, Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF) Vice President Ellen Golombek said, “This politically motivated regulatory change deliberately confuses contraception – that is, birth control – with abortion, putting political agendas ahead of patients’ needs and jeopardizing American women's access to contraception. Let’s be clear: birth control is not abortion.”
Ninety-eight percent of American women use some form of birth control at some point in their lives, Golombek added. "Birth control is not abortion; it is basic women's health care. Women know this."
325,000 men and women, along with dozens of health care, religious, research and advocacy organizations and almost 150 members of Congress have signed letters or a petition to the Bush administration demanding it table the new regulations, Golombek said.
Illyse Hogue of MoveOn.org's political action committee, which joined Planned Parenthood in circulating the petition and informing the public about the new Bush administration rules, said, "For the Bush administration to quietly try to redefine 'abortion' to include birth control, and use that change to threaten laws protecting women and rape survivors, shows how completely out-of-touch Republican leadership has become."
Hogue described Bush's new regulations as part of a "radical agenda" that even he knows "wouldn't fly if it were put before the voters."
Hogue pointed out that Bush is using the tactic of a rule change as a means of avoiding having to gain congressional approval of his plan. She further noted that while Obama has publicly opposed the new regulation, McCain has remained silent on the matter.
According to PPAF, the American Medical Association and the American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians oppose the new regulation as well.
In 2005, Illinois resident Megan Kelly faced discrimination by a pharmacist who refused to fill her birth control prescription. She stated that the pharmacist openly admitted that personal beliefs about contraception were the reason for not doing so. Kelly got mad and became active in the movement to ensure equal treatment by pharmacists and other health care providers.
“It’s disheartening to think other women could face the shock and embarrassment I did by having a pharmacist say they won’t fill a birth control prescription,” Kelly said. She became a tireless advocate for an Illinois law that ensures patients’ prescriptions are filled. “At the time, I didn’t know whether to cry or get angry and I can’t believe I have to have this conversation all over again.”
Illinois had already ruled that it was illegal to discriminate against women clients who sought to fill birth control prescriptions.
The Bush administration's new rules are trying to take the right to birth control away from women by allowing a confusion of birth control with abortion, Kelly added.
In a statement, Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards linked the issue to the general health care crisis. "At a time when more and more families are uninsured and under economic assault," she noted, "we find our health care system is in crisis and our president taking steps to deny access to basic care. Women’s ability to manage their own health care is at risk of being compromised by politics and ideology."
The new regulations "are nothing more than a blatant attempt to undermine women’s access to reproductive health care," said Debra L. Ness of the National Partnership for Women and Families (NPWF) in a separate statement to the press. "This is a desperate attempt by an administration in its waning days to impose one set of religious and moral views on the nation’s women, depriving them of their right to make their own informed health care decisions."
The rules, the NPWF pointed out, are scheduled to be posted in the federal Registry on Tuesday August 26th, ironically designated as Women's Equality Day, which commemorates the passages of the Women's Suffrage Amendment to the US Constitution.
