Non-Forcible Rape and Other Myths: ‘The No Support for Women’s Reproductive Choices Act’: Whose Conscience? (Part 3)

H.R. 3 also intends to ‘provide for conscience protections’, which I feel is worth deconstructing. Conscience clauses, in certain areas of the United States, permit pharmacists, physicians, and other providers of health care not to provide certain medical services for reasons of religion or conscience, and protects those who choose not provide services from discipline by the law or discrimination. According to the Guttmacher Institute’s analysis of state policies as of February 2011, “46 states allow some health care providers to refuse to provide abortion services,” and “14 states allow some health care providers to refuse to provide services related to contraception.” If H.R. 3 passes we will see a whole new crack down on who decides what is morally questionable for whom.

Explicitly allowing a representative of power to refuse to provide or participate in abortion or contraceptive services, for women, needs to be interrogated. It is important to emphasize that abortion and contraceptive services that one might exercise their “conscience clause” to withhold, relate specifically to women. I can’t imagine such an active fight for the right to refuse to sell condoms to an adult man, based on grounds of morality, or the concern he is a victim and unsure of the sin he may be committing. Or even on the contrary, who he may be impregnating against their will.

A troubling example that happened last month is of an Idaho pharmacist, who refused to fill out a prescription for Methergine, a medicine used to prevent or control bleeding of the uterus following childbirth, a miscarriage or an abortion. The reason for the pharmacist’s refusal was simple; she “suspected” the Methergine prescription may have been for a woman who had undergone an abortion. When, under grounds of patient confidentiality, the nurse could not confirm whether or not this was the case, the pharmacist refused not only to fill out the prescription, but also to refer the nurse to another pharmacy. This is particularly upsetting because clearly the woman in question’s safety and well-being was not put first – Methergine could have potentially life-saving effects, and at the least, remove and prevent further discomfort in an already difficult and distressing situation.

To quote a concerned citizen on the website OpenCongress, “allowing the State or Federal government to identify some medical procedures as "morally conscionable” in some situations and as "morally unconscionable" in others is disingenuous. It reinforces the concept that the reasons for the procedure are relevant. If abortion is "morally unconscionable" because abortion kills an unborn human being, then whether the procedure is done for reasons of rape or incest or for financial reasons should not make a difference in the law”.

Yet, even the strictest pro-life campaigners understand the complications of making abortion illegal. When push comes to shove, in the most extreme cases of an unwanted pregnancy Republican politicians have publicly dismissed the women in these scenarios as victims, not criminals. Therefore by taking steps toward making abortion un-constitutional, un-worthy of government financial support, and even illegal if performed using Federal funding, is not women-friendly or particularly people-pleasing to say the least.

Compromising a woman’s access to healthcare and contraception negates her agency as an autonomous individual.. What does a “clause” that subjects women to scrutiny and judgement, based primarily on the religious views of an individual in a position of power, imply about a women’s role in the decisions made about her body? As Jessica Valenti argues in her book ‘The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women’, what you will find if you sift through the rhetoric of “caring for women, ‘life’, and concern for young women’s sexual health, is quite simple: an underlying fear of women’s sexuality, an overwhelming need to control it, and an undercurrent of paternalism suggesting women need protection from themselves.”

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Jessica Summers is an intern at the Journal. She is currently a visiting student at the University of California at Berkeley. During this semester, she has been working on several blog posts for the Journal. Each day this week, we will be posting one part of the five parts of her newest piece.

Agendas (Part 1)
Forced (Part 2)
Whose Conscience? (Part 3)
State v. Women (Part 4)
Rise of the Right (Part 5)