"Freedom of conscience"

[sashayaki]

So. There is a proposed law by the Bush administration that would allow doctors to refuse to give abortions or sterilizations (just female, as far as I can tell) based on moral or religious objections. Hereis the proposed rule. Not the draft, mind - the actual rule

Comments

[zamiel]

Or you could … pick another doctor, just as if it were a free market. Which it is.

There is nothing so broken that government intervention can’t fuck it up worse, and that includes (maybe primordially) medical care. Your objection to government interfering with a doctor choosing what services to render is just as harmful, if not moreso, than banning the procedures. Why? Because if women truly care about the control of their own bodies, if it’s really an issue they give a shit about, then they can and will choose OBGYN’s that provide that service. And the ones that don’t provide that service will suffer a loss of profit. If it’s sufficient enough, they’ll go out of business and the market, actively, will have chosen without question what services they’re willing to support.

On the other hand, if enough women do care enough about such things but differently than you, those doctors who publically state they won’t perform those procedures will do just fine, as will the doctors that do them. And then everyone will have a choice.

Not just people who agree with you.

This is the essential fallacy of both the Left and the Right, the belief that their opinion is the only right and just one and by Hell, everyone else better agree or the Might of the State will choose for them. Not to put too fine a point on it, but, “fuck that.” The State serves at the Will of the People, not at the will of either conservative theologians or sap-headed college students. The Invisible Hand does a better job of culling the herd than either side.

Never pretend you know what you’re talking about. Either know enough to defend your position, or don’t take it. And if you do take a position, be ready to defend it from unexpected directions. Everything else is weakness.

[sashayaki]

The problem is that there aren't always other doctors in reasonable distance. Especially in small rural areas, like where I'm from. What if it's a teen who wants it, especially one who doesn't want their parents to know? Their choices are limited. It's expensive to travel, these procedures often require several trips - it can be difficult enough without the added difficulty of finding a doctor willing to perform the procedure.

I don't consider myself the left or the right, either - much to my parents' dismay tonight as they tried talking politics with me (they're republicans).

[zamiel]

If a teen wants it without their parents to know, they’ve got a whole different set of laws and rules to go by, not the least being whether or not the doctor has a legal responsibility to inform the legal caretakers and thus those both responsible for their care and ongoing support. That’s wholly unrelated to your point and is really more an issue for supporting more doctors in rural areas, or evacuating people from absolute shiteholes. But neither of them are the business of the State.

I think Eric the Half-Bee’s settled on describing me as an anarcho-fascist, but what he really means is a Pure Objectivist, philosophically.

If there are enough women in an area wanting a service, there’s economic and social pressure to provide that to them. It’s not instant and it’s not magic. What you seem to want is for the medical profession to be ready to do whatever you want them to at whatever point and under whatever rules you deem just. And cheaply. No market in the world works that way, least one where the State’s already got their little claws in there. If your proposed counter to that is to suggest to doctors, good doctors, that have spent a lot more on getting their degree than you have on living where you are or some travel, that they, by Law, must service you? You’ve just said your rights as a consumer trump all rights of the providers. In such an environ … you get no providers. Period.

Doctors are limited, sometimes they are distributed in a way difficult for you to access. That’s not the doctor’s fault, that’s the way it is. But they have a service and you want that service. Guess who has the leverage in that transaction? If you have lots of people who want that service without a supplier, advertise the lack.

But leave the coercive power of the State out of it.

[dsendros]

Again, it is actually Sasha - and not you - protesting the coercion of the state by objecting to this rule. The timestamp on this post is earlier than on the one where you respond to me, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say maybe you hadn't realized that you and she were on the same side yet. But if I'm wrong, I'm not really sure what you're arguing about here.

[dsendros]

Zamiel,

You do something really odd in this argument. You seem to argue for the virtue of a free market, and then argue that new government regulations that prohibit the free hiring and firing of employees are the proper way to go about obtaining market freedoms. I'm not sure you understand what you're talking about. Allow me to elaborate.

The proposed regulations would not limit restrictions on doctors, who are technically free to deny care to anyone they choose to. Instead, they would place restrictions on employers by not allowing them to fire doctors (or technicians who clean the instruments, or trainees helping out, etc.) who refuse to do abortion-related work (abortion is defined extremely loosely in this rule, but that's another issue). This would mean that Planned Parenthood couldn't fire a doctor for refusing to perform an abortion. It would mean that Denver Medical couldn't fire an internist because he wouldn't prescribe birth control. It would not mean that a private practice physician would be forced to kill a fetus he believed had been given life and a soul at the moment of conception by his eternal Savior.

Let me state that again more succinctly: This rule is not a proscription of a doctor's free will. It is the imposition of the government's will on private employers.

I suggest you reexamine the issue and try to formulate your opinion around facts instead of what you read on a Ron Paul flyer or an RNC e-mail. Your post is a rambling, rhetoric-filled jumble of confusion and poorly researched opinions. It does have one commendable moment of lucidity. You really shouldn't ever pretend to know what you're talking about.

[zamiel]

Just read the proposal in it’s entirety, again, much to my now beleagured legal-parsing neurons.

Yes, the rule would affect providers, clinics, hospitals and other collaborations of doctors who, having found that Sister Mary Catherine cannot lay a single dainty finger on a wiener until Sunday cannot be dismissed based on a restriction borne from religious belief. They can certainly have a long sit down with her and say that all they do is flick the wee-wee, and if she can’t perform they’ll let her go with a charming referral. Likewise, if Me Ting refuses to do abortion support and the clinic is a planned paranthood clinic, they can’t boot her out the door for not wanting to spool up the dangly wet cords around the place, but they can dink him hard for the job he is doing, whatever that is, and he be “released from service.” All this bill does is essentially define the vague line between freedom of religion and the freedom of the employer ti clean house with a flamethrower.

So, insofar as Federal Will is being imposed, that the great demon State has been summoned forth and bound again in this set of knots, I agree it’s insipd and ridiculous. I do. But it’s got nothing to do with women’s reprodyctive rights only insofar as those are the ones people seem to care about, provider and consumer, both.

Of course, frame it as a very dull, empty-headed, yet-another-complaint-about-Takings-Clause overreach, and you sure can’t rattle the chains on a bunch of college girls nearly as well, can ye? Point out it’s still a place where market forces will rapidly cut one side from the other and make patient choice plainer, and everyone shrugs, because they’ll have to do less work to transcend a simple system with local controls than a impermiable one. Tell them the bad guys are coming to take their bodies away from them and build Collecovisions in their hollowed out cooches by doctors who oppose doing abortions and you’re onto a story you can sell, like the Yeti.

It’s a nothing story. Its a threat to your ability to get an abortion like a tank of gas is to go to a good meal. People of other persuasions that might not want to work there are making my food at the Steak & Shake, because the government infliences hires and fires. But firings happen, even to the untouchables. And some places flourish because they cater to the untouchables, order to chair.

In the final lite, this is one of those bits of Executive order that have only a neutral effect on the providers of care in your area and makes it easier to get what you want, anyway.

If you argue the other side, you’ll see, very swiftly, that the other options short of (do nothing) which is always the best to have governments do, this is about as little as they can get away with and still seem like it means something.

[dsendros]

You just conceded the point, then argued that it didn't really matter anyway and that you were still right because people can get around the regulations (read: break the law) and suffer no serious consequences. This, despite the fact that you spent most of your first post arguing that we must put a stop to ridiculous government overreach and needless, anti-market laws. You called it "the Might of the State"; you capitalized it, as if it were the great, hulking menace our society must vanquish or be vanquished by.

I'm glad we can throw off our oppressors so easily.