Hell No! to C-484 and C-537

Thanks to the Quebec Federation of Medical Specialists, backdoor anti-abortion bill C-484 is finally getting the attention it deserves in the traditional media. Of course, bloggers have been keeping it warm for you. Now let us focus our attention on another attack on the reproductive liberty of women in Canada - private member's bill C-537.

This enactment protects the right of health care practitioners and other persons to refuse, without fear of reprisal or other discriminatory coercion, to participate in medical procedures that offend a tenet of their religion, or their belief that human life is inviolable.

900 ft. Jesus summed it up tidily over at her place:

Sounds pretty fair at first, regardless of religious or spiritual beliefs, doesn't it? But follow through on what this would mean to the rights of clients. But look at Vellacott's phrase "Some have even been wrongfully dismissed." This means not only would these health care workers be able to refuse to give certain treatments, but this refusal to serve clients cannot be taken into account in the hiring process because it would be religious discrimination.

So that leaves clients exposed to situations where they could be going in for treatment - even emergency treatment - and be refused such treatment based on the health care workers beliefs. It would violate the workers rights to announce their religious beliefs, so clients will have no warning - sort of like the no-fly list. You don't know until you get there if you'll be turned away.

Dangerous as well is the vague terms - "protection of conscience rights in the health care profession," and "prohibit coercion in medical procedures that offend a person's religion or belief that human life is inviolable." Vellacott, having but a very tiny brain and one that has been over-sanitized by very narrow doctrine may not realize that there are other religions besides his. What of groups who oppose blood transfusion? Or medications? The definition of human life is tenuous and introduce religious conscience into that, and well, there's that whole soul thing to take into account. Save the body but damn the soul? I think not, many conscious stricken folks may cry.

With C-537, if you live in a rural area with only one pharmacy in town, and the pharmacist refuses to stock or dispense the oral contraceptives that you have a prescription for, you're shit out of luck. Even if you're taking it for acne, or to regulate severe PMS. Not that it should matter if you have a prescription - it really shouldn't be the pharmacist's business why you're taking it, morally speaking. C-537 enshrines in law the right of a health care worker or other person to refuse to do their job because of their personal moral judgement. Oh, and they can't be hired or denied a job they refuse to perform according to their personal moral judgement, either.

If you're hiring the only family doctor for a clinic, and you have two otherwise equally qualified applicants, but one refuses to recommend, consult about, or prescribe hormonal birth control or emergency contraception, you can't not hire them even though they will not be able to fully care for or treat at least 50% of the population (the female half).

How do these conscious clauses pan out in the US, where the Canadian anti-abortion crowd gets so many of it's ideas? Just super!

"There are pharmacists who will only give birth-control pills to a woman if she's married. There are pharmacists who mistakenly believe contraception is a form of abortion and refuse to [dispense] it to anyone," said Adam Sonfield of the Alan Guttmacher Institute in New York, which tracks reproductive issues. "There are even cases of pharmacists holding prescriptions hostage, where they won't even transfer it to another pharmacy when time is of the essence."

That's what happened to Kathleen Pulz and her husband, who panicked when the condom they were using broke. Their fear spiked when the Walgreens pharmacy near their home in Milwaukee refused to fill an emergency prescription for the morning-after pill.

"I couldn't believe it," said Pulz, 43, who with her husband had long ago decided they could not afford a fifth child. "How can they make that decision for us? I was outraged."

But Pharmacists for Life doesn't give a shit about you and your four already born children, Kathleen! Quelle surprise.

"Our group was founded with the idea of returning pharmacy to a healing-only profession. What's been going on is the use of medication to stop human life. That violates the ideal of the Hippocratic Oath that medical practitioners should do no harm," said Karen Brauer, the Pharmacists for Life president, who was fired from a Kmart pharmacy in Delhi, Ohio, for refusing to fill birth-control prescriptions.

No one knows exactly how often that is happening, but cases have been reported across the country, including in Washington, California, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Texas, New Hampshire, Ohio and North Carolina. Advocates on both sides say the refusals appear to be spreading, often surfacing only in the rare instances when women file complaints.

C-537 makes it illegal to fire people like Karen Brauer, who refuse to perform the job they are licensed for and paid to do. Know what? If I go to work tomorrow and refuse to service half of my clients because my priest told me not to, I'd be out on my arse and I'd deserve it. And if my beliefs just simply couldn't justify me doing my job, I guess I'd have to find another job, not lobby fucking parliament to force someone to employ my judgemental, work-refusing ass.

This doesn't stop at birth control prescriptions, either. Of course, if you refuse medical care and die, leaving your other children without a mother, you just might get canonized! Isn't that wonderful. However if your husband and children would rather have a wife and mother, and you would rather live as well and so want an abortion and cancer treatment, again, under C-537, shit out of luck! If the doctor refuses, better make arrangements, Mommy. This link is about deaths of women due to the strict abortion ban in Nicaragua, but they could just as easily be deaths due to doctors who refuse to treat, especially if they were protected under a conscience clause:

• Pregnant women suffering from illnesses such as kidney failure have died because they were not allowed to interrupt their pregnancies to treat their conditions.

• A poor, single mother died of a heart attack after doctors refused to treat her severe hemorrhaging because the fetus was still alive. Neither the fetus nor the woman survived, and her 3-year-old son now lives with his indigent grandmother in precarious conditions.

Call or write your MP. Tell them you are opposed to Bills C-484 and C-537 and would like them to vote against them. Remind them to stand up for the rights of Canadian women to access reproductive healthcare without interference from the religious beliefs of others. Tell them you won't have your government commanded by fringe special interest groups like REALwomen and anti-abortion extremists, and you won't have your rights undermined by backdoor legislation.