Below the Belt: — Skirting the Rules Again
A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy

December 3, 2004

The election is barely over, and already the Bush Republicans in Congress are cheating — skirting the rules to enact broad new limitations on women's health care as a payback to their right wing base. The question is how many Republicans will stand up to their leadership on yet another ethics issue — the answer is "not many."

Yes, this is an ethics issue. Congressional Republicans, who just repealed existing ethics rules to protect their leadership, are now slithering around whatever parts of the process don't suit them — this time by enacting far-reaching anti-abortion legislation that was never heard by the Senate, not even in committee, and they threatened to shut down the government to do it.

These bullies counted on Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans to hold their noses and give in to these strong-arm tactics — after all, they couldn't hold up the entire government by refusing to approve the spending measure. Newsflash — women's rights supporters like Barbara Boxer, who threatened strong action weren't the ones holding up the budget — that was the Republican leadership, which decided to ignore the fact that Congress has both a House and a Senate.

Here's a tip for those Senators who are apparently too many years removed from the playground to remember: Giving in to bullies doesn't make them say "thank you" and behave nicely next time — it just escalates the behavior. So unless you're prepared to spend the next several years having the Senate be completely bypassed on important legislation, maybe you should think about drawing that line in the sand right now.

This would have been a good issue to start with, because it goes to the heart of good health care, which is a top issue with voters. What is at stake? Only the right of women to receive full and appropriate information about their medical options — and the ability, indeed the responsibility, of doctors to give patients that information.

Craftily inserted into a major spending bill, this new provision allows any health care entity — a hospital, clinic, HMO or other insurance provider — to effectively declare itself anti-abortion and then prohibit any of its personnel from providing abortion services, information or referrals. Even if the patient specifically asks for the information, doctors at these facilities must not violate the gag placed upon them.

Of course, hospitals and insurance companies were always free to deny women full reproductive services, but not while collecting federal, state or local tax dollars. Even if an individual state wants to withhold funding from such entities (as many have done) because the state government believes this refusal of services to be discrimination, it can no longer do so. So much for the conservatives' belief in states rights!

The news of late has featured reports about pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or emergency contraception because of their personal "conscience." The argument made in these stories is that as long as the pharmacist passes the prescription along to another employee or directs the woman to a different pharmacy, a woman's reproductive freedom is not truly at risk.

But imagine this same concept at work on a much grander scale. (And imagine an insurance company actually having a "conscience.") Where will women turn when no health provider is compelled to offer complete medical care?

A dedicated advocate for reproductive rights, Boxer attempted to derail this provision, but was pressured to step aside in order to move the spending bill to a vote. For her trouble, Boxer was promised a vote on repealing the provision next year. But who really believes that an even more conservative Congress will overturn the provision?

The unscrupulous work of right-wing legislators has been laid bare in this devious power play. If conservatives are reluctant or incapable of overturning the Roe v. Wade decision outright, they can always enact more and more restrictive legislation behind closed doors.

What's next? We know the right wing hates mifepristone, the "abortion pill," which is currently in clinical trials for expanded use and shows promise in treating a variety of ills, such as Cushing's Syndrome, meningioma, and uterine tumors. Maybe the next spending bill will tell doctors that they can't advise Cushing's patients that mifepristone is a treatment option, even if they ask. What about the use of stem cells? Any area where medicine can help better women's (and men's) lives apparently is subject to the interference of single-minded ideologues.

Whatever happened to "First, do no harm"? Perhaps Senators should direct it as a caution to the Majority Leader: "Frist, do no harm."