I ran across this article at Science Progress, about efforts to aggressively enforce the Weldon (or “church”) amendments, which make it illegal to compel a health care worker to provide a service they find morally objectionable. The author focuses on the possibility that the new rules would change the definition of conception from the time of embryo implantation, to the time of conception – but really, what they do (if you read the PDF) is give broad freedom to all medical personnel to decide for themselves what exactly they do and don’t find conscionable. Which sounds fine of course, from a libertarian point of view. But it also sucks if you happen to have accidentally gotten pregnant in Montgomery, AL, or some rural town in North Dakota. It seems like the rules are so broad as to allow a doctor to refuse to prescribe birth control to an unmarried woman. Additionally annoying is that this is just another example of the Feds bullying the states with money they took from the state’s citizens – the rule only applies to institutions that take federal money… like just about every public hospital (if there are any left that is…), and it will have the effect of shifting federal funding to conservative institutions, insofar as liberal ones are willing to refuse the federal funding in order to be able to require their personnel to perform all legal and medically advisable procedures.
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