Part of the problem is that A: Like many pro-life positions it places the priority on a potential life over an actual woman. This goes against medical precedent because medical practitioners are currently taught that this isn't good medicine. If a cancer treatment is going to save the mother but cause her to abort her child, the mother takes priority because she is a living human sitting right in front of you asking you for medical care. Doctors who don't believe in abortion could quite literally kill her in such a case because women are less important than the children they carry. Which is interesting, because it technically means that once a woman is born (or at least once she hits her childrearing years) she actually becomes less important than she was when she was an embryo. At least by the pro-life perspective.
The other problem is that B: The conscience of the doctor performing the procedure is upheld above the conscience of the patient. For example, I believe that with 500,000 or so children in foster care in this country it is morally irresponsible to have children. Call it the Bob Barker school of population moderation: spay and neuter yourselves. Adopt a kid who needs a home instead of making new ones. This is why I would have an abortion if I became pregnant: when I can support kids I feel a strong moral imperative to adopt instead of making babies of my own. However, DHHS believes my doctor should have veto power over this life choice. My doctor's conscience and judgment takes precedent not just on medical matters but on moral ones as well. This is why feminists get pissed about this. It treats women like they're not qualified to set their own timeline for breeding, instead being forced to do it on someone else's behest and by someone else's rules.
And before you say it, yes it is going to be someone else's rules, because if the woman agreed with her protesting doctor she wouldn't be there for an abortion. This means that doctors are enforcing an unshared moral imperative on a patient because she is not qualified to decide when she has kids: but her doctor is? It's like the ad campaign against pharmacists who refuse to fill certain prescriptions states, "I didn't choose to have children. My pharmacist chose for me."
You want to talk about freedom in America? How about the freedom to decide for yourself when to have children? I honestly think that women in this situation will suffer far more than doctors who face the trauma of meeting the same professional standards and providing all patients the same standard of care no matter what religion the doctor follows. The doctor has always had freedom of choice. It's called, "Do I want to go to med school, can I handle being a doctor?" If they went through med school, took their oath, and went into practice, they have already made their choice. I don't go to a steakhouse to be lectured by a Hindu about how eating beef is bad, and I don't go to bars to be served alcohol by a vocal prohibitionist. I don't go to a doctor to be lectured about how I don't deserve the medical care I came for, just because someone else's God cares about a single-celled parasite more than it cares for women.
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The other problem is that B: The conscience of the doctor performing the procedure is upheld above the conscience of the patient. For example, I believe that with 500,000 or so children in foster care in this country it is morally irresponsible to have children. Call it the Bob Barker school of population moderation: spay and neuter yourselves. Adopt a kid who needs a home instead of making new ones. This is why I would have an abortion if I became pregnant: when I can support kids I feel a strong moral imperative to adopt instead of making babies of my own. However, DHHS believes my doctor should have veto power over this life choice. My doctor's conscience and judgment takes precedent not just on medical matters but on moral ones as well. This is why feminists get pissed about this. It treats women like they're not qualified to set their own timeline for breeding, instead being forced to do it on someone else's behest and by someone else's rules.
And before you say it, yes it is going to be someone else's rules, because if the woman agreed with her protesting doctor she wouldn't be there for an abortion. This means that doctors are enforcing an unshared moral imperative on a patient because she is not qualified to decide when she has kids: but her doctor is? It's like the ad campaign against pharmacists who refuse to fill certain prescriptions states, "I didn't choose to have children. My pharmacist chose for me."
You want to talk about freedom in America? How about the freedom to decide for yourself when to have children? I honestly think that women in this situation will suffer far more than doctors who face the trauma of meeting the same professional standards and providing all patients the same standard of care no matter what religion the doctor follows. The doctor has always had freedom of choice. It's called, "Do I want to go to med school, can I handle being a doctor?" If they went through med school, took their oath, and went into practice, they have already made their choice. I don't go to a steakhouse to be lectured by a Hindu about how eating beef is bad, and I don't go to bars to be served alcohol by a vocal prohibitionist. I don't go to a doctor to be lectured about how I don't deserve the medical care I came for, just because someone else's God cares about a single-celled parasite more than it cares for women.