A Parting Prescription From Dr. Bush

"the new standard could allow vegetarian doctors to withhold cholesterol-lowering treatment from meat eaters"

Are you serious? This is your big concern? Mind you unless it's about abortion nobody would care. People would just go to a different doctor or drugstore. This has never been about availability of service. It is dishonest to pretend otherwise. For anything else it doesn't matter. "I'm sorry I will not preform that boob job, nose job, fill in your own elective procedure." Surprise people just go somewhere else. If a drug store didn't carry heavy narcotics or easily abused drugs because it was to much hassle or to much liability we would never even hear of it. Who would care? So lets be honest about how we frame the question please.

That being said, I believe health care providers should be allowed to decide what services they are willing to provide as long as they are honest, provide full info to patients, and don't go from "I don't want to do that" to "you shouldn't do that". Stores, hospitals, clinics,ect can set their own policies and if you don't like it then don't work there. If they don't want to provide services that the "employer" wants to provide then their employment should not be protected if the employer wants to terminate.

Personal I don't think it's a real issue. Walgreen's would fire a pharmacist who wouldn't fill a prescription because of personal beliefs. If on the other hand you work at someplace that allows that choice then so be it. People can always go down the street. Govt does not need to require people to do things they find against their beliefs.

Catholic Hospitals do not perform abortions even without the rules. Most Oby/GYNs do not perform abortions. If the Obama Adminsitration makes it law that every OB/GYN has to perform abortions and that Catholic hospitals have to perform abortions, that will be a new government policy and will be getting close to forced servitude.

Kudos to President Bush for this stand, though it's hard to see how it won't soon be overturned by soon-to-be President Obama. This issue is bigger than the U.S., as this 2005 article from the U.K. details. It does give one pause when thinking about the possibility of a single-payer health care system in the U.S. How would Christians who oppose abortion maintain medical practices if the government enforced an abortion policy through its exclusive health care system?

this isn't about "forcing" anyone to perform abortion. That's preposterous. Even SD points out that many choose not to. This is about forcing entire hospitals not to, or lose federal funding. That's wrong. A hospital does many things. Shutting them down to advance your antiabortion tyranny is just wrong.