A Few Monday Reads

 Obituary:  Former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, 67, has died.   She suffered from brain cancer, which is about as bad as it gets.  She was also the daughter of the late Texas governor Ann Richards.

Snip:

Her mother, the former Texas governor Ann Richards, was a political legend, but Richards herself became a household name in 2015, after anti-abortion activists released secret recordings of Planned Parenthood workers purportedly discussing the sale of fetal tissue. The recordings – which Planned Parenthood said were doctored – spurred multiple congressional and state investigations that could not substantiate their contents, and led US House Republicans to grill Richards in an hours-long, highly publicized hearing.

After stepping down from Planned Parenthood in 2018, Richards went on to found Supermajority, an organization dedicated to championing women’s leadership. After the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022 – in a case involving the kind of state-level abortion restrictions that Richards tried to defeat – Richards started Charley, a bot to help abortion seekers get accurate information about the procedure, and Abortion in America, a campaign to publicize stories of post-Roe abortions. In late 2024, Joe Biden awarded Richards the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the US.

So-Called "Conscience Clauses"

have been on the books for more than 30 years with regard to abortion, but now the Bush administration wants to expand it to include "other procedures" such as, I suppose, contraceptives.

And it could go even further than that:

Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.” Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?

The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?

I can just see H.I.V. patients being denied care because of somebody's bigotry. I would say something like this would violate ADA, but who knows?

But I suppose contraception is the real target. There is a segment of the population which cannot accept the fact women do have lives in addition to or other than traditional family life.