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Over at the Motherblog, Dana catches some nasty Bush administration maneuvering on abortion:
The Bush administration is circulating regulatory changes within the Department of Health and Human Services that would prevent health care providers from choosing not to hire ideologues opposed to reproductive rights (including distributing contraception). The regulations, which could go into affect in as little as two months, would also re-define abortion as "any of the various procedures -- including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action -- that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”Wow. In the past, HHS defined abortion the way the American Medical Association does -- as the termination of a pregnancy after implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine wall. This new definition is clearly meant to re-classify emergency contraception, and perhaps even ordinary hormonal birth control pills, as abortion.Guess you gotta pay the religious right back sometime, and the final year of your administration is a better time than most. This seems like the sort of thing some enterprising Senator, or presidential candidate, could make some noise with. Public attitudes towards abortion are complicated, but attitudes towards contraception are rather less so: Folks are broadly for it. The Bush administration, and presumably a fair number of congressional Republicans, are not. The public should know that.
