And Along Those Same Lines: Further Silver Linings?

While they must surely have been asked, and possibly even answered elsewhere, here are a few more questions about my previous post about those new "conscience" clauses Bush flacks in Health and Human Services cooked up:

1) Further Questions:

• Does that mean doctors may now in good conscience ignore Supreme Court rulings about withholding life-saving care for women who's health or lives are threatened by late-term complications of pregnancy?

• Does that mean doctors may now in good conscience ignore everyone-but-Oregon's laws that require them to let their patients suffer lingering, painful death?

• Does this mean doctors (and don't forget pharmacists) may now in good conscience dispense Plan-B emergency contraception over the counter to women of *all* ages even when the law says otherwise?

• Does this mean federally- and state-funded doctors, pharmacists, and other caregivers including teachers may now in good conscience ignore "gag law" policies preventing them from mentioning anything but abstinence when counseling their clients?

• Does this mean doctors, pharmacists, and other caregivers in good conscience are now protected from employers that insist they deny or withhold care, medication, or information about *all* options for dealing with issues of contraception, pregnancy, and STIs?

Just curious.

2: Proactive Activism Opportunity

Oh yeah, and while we're at it if those "life begins at ejaculation**" types get their way, especially if they get their way with the broad language they all shoot for then here's an other question. There's an *extraordinary* correspondence between "pro-lifers" and major polluters and opponents of occupational health and safety and product-safety regulation. So I wonder how happy they'll be when anyone from mainstream environmentalists to consumer activists to a revived EPA to the anti-vaccination/anti-fluoridation crowd starts throwing everything from civil lawsuits to criminal complaints to shareholder activism to survivor's benefits claims for nominal "life" that was "cut short" by exposure to, say, spontaneous-abortion-inducing, miscarriage-inducing or even implantation-inhibiting chemicals, manufacturing byproducts, and toxic waste?

And remember, according to the Bush "administration" appointees it's enough to *imagine* a product causes the "loss of a human life" at the fertilized-egg stage so science? Who's going to need science to back up their claim of irreparable (if possibly also undetectable) carnage caused by mine tailings, sediment dredgings, pesticide oversprays, plastic-packaging outgassings, packaged-food preservatives, food-coloring agents, "sick building" workplaces, and on and on and on?

Note: now obviously it would be pretty terrible if the 'wingers finally landed a "life begins at conception" ruling from, say, the Supreme Court. But there's no reason, at all, at all, for a nice, healthy group of pro-choice-oriented legal activists to set up a highly-visible operation issuing (or even just promising to issue) white papers detailing all exciting new ways activists could use a "life begins at conception" against asbestos producers like Dick Cheney's old Halliburton-Dresser subsidiary to liquor distillers to air fresheners manufacturers to oil refiners to non-organic farmers. A heck of a lot of "pro-life" money comes from sources in those industries and I think it would be wonderful if they were taken to task for their support.

[** The "you stick it you own it" scoring method they *really* believe in. --fl]