The Orders of the Day were considered, as follows:
The Senate Bill providing timely access to emergency contraception (Senate, No. 2073) (its title having been changed by the committee on Bills in the Third Reading),- was read a third time.
Pending the question on passing the bill to be engrossed, Mr. Brown moved that the bill be amended, in section 4, by adding the following paragraph:-
Nothing in this section shall impose any requirements upon any employee, physician or nurse of any facility to the extent that administering the contraception conflicts with a sincerely held religious belief. In determining whether an employee, physician or nurse of any facility has a sincerely held religious belief administering the contraception, the conflict shall be known and disclosed to said facility and on record at said facility.
If it is deemed that said employee, physician or nurse of any facility has a sincerely held religious conflict administering the contraception, then said treating facility shall have in place a validated referral procedure policy for referring patients for administration of the emergency contraception that will administer the emergency contraception, which may include a contract with another facility. The referrals shall be made at no additional cost to the patient.
It protect’s a patients ability to receive a contraceptive and shields a hospital employee from violating their religious beliefs. Everyone wins.
that there are parts of the state in which there aren’t hospitals on every block?
<
p>”Everyone wins.” Good Lord.
I’m all ears, sir.
Give rape victims whatever care the need, and for god’s sake don’t compound their tragedy by making them trek from place to place wondering whether or not they’ll get treatment. If someone can’t handle that, they should find another line of work.
<
p>It’s just too bad if that rubs against some peoples beliefs, in an emergency medical setting the patients needs are paramount, nobody else.
<
p>It’s not unusual in our society for individual beliefs to run into the necessities of law and the greater good- though notable that conservatives only seem to want to carve out exceptions around this one issue. After all, plenty of people have strong moral objections to the war, but they still have to pay taxes that fund it.
<
p>
because there aren’t enough hospitals as there is, and he avoided a situation where the religious ones may have closed their doors.
<
p>Oh, and spare us the victim card on paying taxes. Everyone pays taxes for things they consider morally reprehensible.
then why do conservatives think that federal funds should not be used for abortions? Why is abortion the one exception to tax money being used for things people consider morally reprehensible?
<
p>And what’s this nonsense about hospitals closing? Are you seriously suggesting that hospitals would close their doors rather than give emergency contraception? Did Brown’s amendment pass or fail? And are religious hospitals still open?
Catholic institutions have a history of closing their doors rather than being forced to engage in certain activities.
<
p>I don’t think they should, but it’s a possibility. Remember the Catholic Adoption Agency?
…by closing their doors rather than provide care for someone who needs care and may not share their belief system, then I’m a better Christian than any of them – and I’m an atheist! But, atheist or not, I do remember a story about a Samaritan, and the help he provided to someone not of his tribe. Maybe they need to take another look at their bibles…
Is that contraceptives are sinful, and there is not a need to provide them because of that reason. Life is precious, even in the event of a rape, and because there was a rape, that does not mean the life created by it is any less sacred than that which is created in other circumstances.
I care that the belief system intrudes on emergency care – see my post below:
<
p>http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/s…
It is no accident that the “life” being considered “precious” has a 50% chance of being male, while the life being destroyed by this policy is “just” a woman.
<
p>This is medieval patriarchal misogynist twaddle, dressed up in modern words in an attempt to make it more acceptable.
<
p>Facilities that insist on this nonsense ought to close or be closed.
Of course, Scott Brown doesn’t “make laws.” The legislature makes laws. Brown’s amendment was rejected, thank heavens — even his own party leader (Brian Lees) thought it was a steaming pile of crap. And Brown voted for the legislation anyway. So he absolutely did not “avoid a situation where the religious ones may have closed their doors.” He, in fact, accomplished nothing, as usual.
<
p>I really want to know what the hell this guy has accomplished in the legislature.
Brown’s proposal didn’t become law, and no hospitals closed. You’re trying to argue hypotheticals about a situation that has actually happened.
<
p>Yes, there are lots of things that people have to get involved with in some way that they may find reprehensible (and the war is one), that’s exactly my point. Yet, conservatives spend immense amount of energy trying to carve out exemptions around this one thing, and not any other…curious.
<
p>Are you really so unable to put yourself in someones else’s shoes that you can’t see the abject cruelty that would result from the implementation of this proposal by Scott Brown? Emergency care for rape is not just some product you can expect people to shop around for.
In his letter to the Pope he argued extensively for the enforcement of conscience clauses and would have argued for it on the health care bill, in fact he made a similar amendment to the HELP Committee version of the health care reform bill before the committee was permanently turned over to Chris Dodd.
<
p>Similarly, if one can support the right to an abortion but be personally opposed to it, one can also support a conscience clause and advocate that people don’t use it. In both cases the politician is arguing that he/she is ensuring other people’s freedom to make their own decisions on questions of ethics and morality while at the same time making it fairly clear what they would do. If it is a dirty and slanderous to call Coakley a “pro-abortion” candidate it is certainly dirty and slanderous to insinuate that Brown is against giving rape victims proper medical treatment. Brown is arguing that health care workers have a right to withhold medical treatment that they deem runs contrary to their medical beliefs while at the same time articulating a wish and a hope, and ensuring mechanisms are in place, that this would not cause harm to the victim. Agree with it or disagree with this from a policy standpoint, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that Brown opposes giving victims medical treatment, that would be just as dishonest as saying Coakley wants women to get abortions.
Obviously the statement “disagree with their medical beliefs” was not a Freudian slip but meant to ready “disagree with their religious beliefs”
Congratulations!
<
p>Scott Brown introduced legislation that would prevent people who need it from getting emergency contraception, potentially forcing women who have been raped to wander from hospital to hospital repeating their story until, perhaps through divine intervention, they find a doctor who will treat them.
<
p>At a minimum — as if being pro-torture, a climate denier, and in favor of even more of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich after the record of 2008 wasn’t evidence enough — this makes clear what an extremist Republican Brown is.
<
p>Which, of course, is why the Teabagger Army from across the country is so rabidly enthused about him.
“] potentially forcing women who have been raped to wander from hospital to hospital repeating their story until, perhaps through divine intervention, they find a doctor who will treat them. “
<
p>Bob, just because you don’t like the amendment doesn’t mean you have to lie about what it does.
If a rape victim goes to St. Whatshername Hospital, where they don’t stock emergency contraception on religious grounds, what options would she have? Going to another hospital emergency room is about it – and if the nearest hospital is another religious one, what then?
wouldn’t not know what hospitals have contraceptives. It also doesn’t say the hospital wouldn’t stock them, but it would protect the right of an individual hospital employee from distributing them. One can fairly assume from the text of the amendment that it may simply be a matter of contacting the doctor or whoever in the hospital who does not morally object to said distribution and having him or her go about it. “May include a contract with another facility”, not “will kick out rape victims on to the street.”
…mean that some rape victims would undoubtedly be shuffled off to some other hospital, being forced to wait for EMERGENCY CARE. The sooner the medicine is administered, the better, but she’s going to be forced to wait for this emergency care because of the peculiar belief system of the person who should give it to her.
<
p>Look at it this way, Joe – you’ve been mugged, and the mugger was deranged, high on PCP. He took your wallet and then he stabbed you – you bleed profusely until an ambulance arrives ten minutes later. But the EMT is a Jehovah’s Witness, he’s against transfusions on religious grounds, and he’s filed all the correct paperwork with his employer, as required by this amendment. He says you’ll have to wait until you get to the hospital to receive any blood. But don’t worry, there’s a referral process, and he’ll say a prayer that you don’t die on the way to the ER – too bad you don’t share his belief system, eh?
<
p>Are you ready for that world, Joe?
Well, I’m so glad your omniscience gives you that kind of insight.
How many rapes occur every year? In a population of millions of people, there’s tens of thousands of rapes, if not hundreds of thousands. If the referral process is allowed to include other facilities, then there’s bound to be many instances where the other facility needs to become involved. That’s not omniscience, that’s reality. Even if the other facility doesn’t get involved, just making her wait for another doctor in the hospital could be detrimental – again, this is emergency care, it needs to be administered quickly.
<
p>Are you ready for the transfusion scenario I described above? What’s different between that and this emergency contraception nonsense? Once you start down the road of religious exceptions to emergency care, where does it stop?
…”withhold medical treatment”.
<
p>If I belong to a church of white supremacy, to I get to withhold treatment to non-whites? How about we just agree that providing treatment is a job requirement, and you’re free to have whatever job you can get.
Because so much of this discussion seems so theoretical to me, let’s try to put it in some context. Say it’s about 2 AM on a Tuesday and you’ve just come back to your second floor apartment in Somerville from seeing a show at Jonathan Swift’s in Harvard Square. It’s late, you’ve had a couple of drinks but you’re pretty sober, you’ve been dancing, and you’re ready to get to sleep. You brush your teeth and otherwise get ready for bed, make sure your old, blind dog is settled in and you go into your bedroom, get into bed and fall asleep.
<
p>And then there’s a noise, like a thud. And then there’s a guy standing in the threshold of the room holding something that kinda sorta looks like a knife. And without getting into the gory details of the threats on your life, the perverted language, and the act itself, let’s fast-forward past the rape to the point where you finally manage not to get killed and get this guy out of your apartment by offering him the beers in your fridge and directions to some club on Somerville Ave.
<
p>After you manage to breathe you find the phone that hasn’t had its cord cut and call the police, who arrive within minutes. Because there is no blood squirting out of you they don’t need to rush you to the hospital, so you spend the next hour or so telling the detective the story and smoking more cigarettes than a casual smoker has a right to smoke. Then you go to the hospital where you have to tell parts of the story again and get probed and tested and shot up with penicillin and whatever before they can send you on your merry way. By this time it’s probably 6 AM and you’ve been awake, really, for almost a day. You’re tired, you’re shaken, you’ve told an awful story to a lot of strangers, and what you really want to do is turn back the clock to the day before and change all your plans. You don’t want to go home, you are afraid of being alone, and at that point you have no idea how *&%$ed up you’re going to be in the years ahead. You have no idea what triggers are going to affect you (a shout out to Kerry Healey for that parking garage ad – nice job!) and what you need is comfort.
<
p>Now, you tell me if you think the appropriate next step for the hospital is to say “I’m sorry, dear, but we’re not going to give you the medical treatment you need, you have to go someplace else”.
<
p>My story is 25 years old. And I can still get upset about it.
Via TPM
<
p>