UW's Shapiro, Charo Hit Bush Effort to Limit Women's Reproductive Freedom

A woman's right to choose is dead if John McCain is elected president.

But the Bush administration is fighting to inflict as much damage as possible on women prior to that sickening possibility of choice disappearing, including decreasing the availability of contraception.

From today's Washington Post:

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing a draft regulation that would deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan or other entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions, including providing birth-control pills, IUDs and the Plan B emergency contraceptive.

"The breadth of this is potentially immense," said Robyn S. Shapiro, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "Is this going to result in a kind of blessed censorship of a whole host of areas of medical care and research?" ... Critics charge that the proposal is the latest example of the administration politicizing science to advance ideological goals. ... Others said the rule could have additional implications, including justifying discrimination against gays, single women or others seeking health care.
"As soon as you have a definition in one part of federal law, it can become the inspiration for the reinterpretation of other statutes," said R. Alta Charo, a lawyer and bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

McCain is even more anti-choice than Bush. It will be interesting to see where McCain lines up on this initiative.

Is this late initiative intended as a way for McCain to shore support with the religious right, though this would hurt him with political independents?

Or is this George W. Bush just being the fool to whom we have become accustomed?

One thing is certain, all women and all who value women's civil rights should be outraged.