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]