General and particular
A Real Conscience Clause? Nobody wants it.
In an
earlier post, and referred to it as candy for the anti-abortion crowd.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life notes that after the "Church Amendment" prohibiting the requirement that federally-funded health care professionals and insurance programs participate in abortion, "States rapidly adopted conscience clauses – mostly for abortion ...."
This is an issue-specific conscience clause, and what people are asking for is generally a patchwork of similar clauses, or a federal umbrella patchwork solution. That is, only certain conscience issues are included; others are deliberately excluded.
Few people, if any at all, want a
real conscience clause. The whole conscience clause argument is just a cottage issue for the pro-life crowd. How many who would argue for a doctor's right to refuse to perform an abortion or a pharmacist's right to refuse to issue legally-prescribed birth control would also argue a doctor's right to refuse a blood transfusion?
This isn't really about consciences and controversial drugs or procedures. This is about women, health, and exercising control over reproductive technology. Burying this political movement in rhetoric as a divine right to conscience is fundamentally dishonest.
• • •
Baron Max said:
Yeah, and used car salesmen are there for the buyers.
Just out of curiosity, when was the last time you worked retail? Yes, it's been a while for me, too, but even in the 1990s, management indoctrinated the staff with the proposition that we were there for the sake of the buyers. The problem with this assertion is that while it helps to act like it's true, nobody really
believes it. And while this might well seem to reinforce your sarcastic assertion, that's a secondary issue. Do you think, at some point, the disconnection between what people say and what they do might start to have an effect on perceptions?
Certainly you're aware that dependability is an attractive quality in most people's minds. Regardless of sincerity, businesses, churches, schools, hospitals, politicians, and lawyers all play after that need. We know the lawyers don't mean it. Politicians? Please. Schools are repeatedly and thoroughly crucified over the idea. Businesses? Lawyers? Politicians? We've long learned that dependability is just a sales pitch with them. Doctors? People
need to be able to depend on their health care professionals.
I, for instance, have a good doctor. For all his gruff bedside manner, the man simply doesn't lie to his patients. If he says you're gonna die, you're gonna die. If he says there's nothing to worry about, you can trust in that, too. It's nice to be able to actually trust what someone says. When I talk to my doctor, I don't want it to feel like listening to sound bites on cable news.
It's an interesting comparison; is mission purpose relevant to the altruistic proposition? Being there for the buyers is an expensive and dangerous business endeavor for a used car salesman. Being there for the patient is the purpose of being a doctor.
But yes, as far as I can tell, everyone from the clerk at Barnes & Noble to the Starbucks barista is still told that they're there for the customers. I even got that lecture at insurance companies, and that was all administrative services work—if I ever talked with a policyholder, something had gone wrong.
But people have expectations about certain things. They've been led to believe that doctors and health care are there for them, and have many substantial reasons to expect it true.
If we're going to change that, let's skip all the political pretense and just tell people straight out.
I think this is where people are getting it all confused. This is NOT about "immediate health", like in an emergency room. This is about elective surgery!! Note the "elective" part?
I think the question of whether or not a pregnancy is conceived in a matter of hours is a fairly immediate concern with fairly immediate impacts.
Indeed, if we want to consider a
real conscience clause, and not some political rally flag like we have in this thread, then I would say a blood transfusion is
definitely an immediate health concern.