Who didn't see this coming?Follow

Hahahaha...

You say that like it's a bad thing.

You are right, I didn't really word my original post very well. The way I see it is that there are two big problems with this rule.

The first is the same problem that existed back when the government was trying to strong-arm pharmacies into hiring pharmacists who refused to dispense emergency contraception and/or birth control. That is the fact that the government is trying to force employers to hire employees who are unwilling to perform the job for which they are being hired.

Now, this makes no sense on a number of fronts. Would a lumber company be legally compelled to hire a lumberjack who happened to be a conservationist who refused to cut down trees? Of course not. Would a butcher shop ever be legally compelled to hire a vegan animal rights activist who refused, on moral grounds, to handle dead animal flesh? Of course not.

But no, the basic logic of not being compelled to hire someone patently unwilling to perform the job for which they are being hired apparently doesn't apply to women's healthcare. Because the aim here is try to try turn women's healthcare clinics into "crisis" pregnancy centers, where women who have been duped into coming believing they will receive the services advertised are instead browbeaten, emotionally blackmailed, and refused the care for which they came.

The other troubling aspect of this is ye olde slippery slope, which is what my original post was primarily conveying. By redefining abortion to include the most common forms of birth control, then the door is wide open to refusing federal funding to clinics which educate about contraception and prescribe birth control, just as funding is now denied to clinics which provide abortion counseling and/or referrals to abortion services.

Basically, this is just another one of the quietly insidious ways in which the right to choose is being gradually, subtly chipped away. The far right has realized a frontal assault on the right to choose wasn't working, so now they're nibbling at the edges instead. Eventually, there won't be anything left.

This is all about power and the Republicans trying to wrestle it away from the people.

Woman-Hater!

Oh yeah, the good ol GOP. The party that conned cajoled and coerced the country into going into an unnecessary war killing thousands of innocent people.

Sorry, there is no comparison what-so-ever to a human being and a twice-divided cell.

Truth-Slayer!

The right to free and bare babies that vote.

Duh.

It's interesting that the GOP wants to give people babies but won't trust them with a choice. How asinine.

Oh jesus, here we go again.

About 9 months after conception when the fully formed, breathing baby is deposited on the table. You seem to be laboring under the misconception that a developing fetus has any sort of conscious thought at all.

To be fair, I doubt you have any idea either. If you do happen to know of any scientific oriented discussion of this, I would be interested however. Have they taken brain scans of fetus's? Honestly the line has to be drawn somewhere, clearly at birth is one place it can be drawn, but it also can be drawn at conception, or when it's implanted.

Besides conscious though does not have anything to do with what we consider appropriate. Animals clearly have some form of conscious thought, but we don't treat them like humans, which is sort of the point. It's not really a very good argument.

Edited, Jul 17th 2008 2:13pm by Xsarus