would do a lot to cure this ill. My solution here is that if you want to be a consciencious objector-fine. God bless, but you need to disclose this fact up front. Need to post a sign in your pharmacy, need to inform potential employers and patients etc.

All it would take is a significant number of women who voted with their feet to bankrupt this nonsense. Even though it isn't particularly relevant in my personal life, I would change my OBGyn in a heartbeat if I knew she bought into this crap.

(the flaw in my plan is of course rural health care)

Oh, agreed!

A conscientious objecting pharmacist is about as useful as a pilot who is afraid of flying.

Except that it won't do much for women in small town and rural America or in poor urban and immigrant communities. The best solution is still for OB/GYNs to do their frickin' jobs in a comprehensive, honest, and ethical manner or else find another line of work :-)

My friend, a rabbi's wife, once tld me that according to Jewish teachings, willingly endangering the life of a mother, in order to keep her pregnancy viable, is unethical.

Elizabeth's story was particularly horrific and the doc here might not be protected even under this new regulation. However, my guess is the purpose is to provide cover for those in greyer areas. Remember, the maternal mortality rate in the US is 8 x 1000 women (twice that for Af Am women). If you have preeclampsia, is your pro-choice doc going to talk about abortion as a reasonable medical option? What about if you are pregnant and develop breast cancer?

I could be wrong, but I doubt abortion is a common procedure performed in the typical ob gyn practice. I seem to remember recent stories about how difficult it is for ObGyns to get training in medical school to perform the abortions. Again, as nasty as this sounds, I think the goals are much more insidious.

(Love the handle BTW.)

In this story, the doctor seriously endangered the health and life of the mother. Ectopic pregnancies are medical emergencies and she could have died or suffered permanent damage or disability. Plus, it's not like the doc merely refused to bring up abortion to her--he failed to inform her of her diagnosis and prognosis in an honest way from the get-go, and only told her that he knew what her condition was all along after she reached the point where she had to seek emergency medical care and surgical intervention and delivered one healthy child and one dead fetus.

She had a very strong case for a successful medical malpractice suit against this guy, "conscientious objections" to abortion notwithstanding. That would be the same with or without the proposed new DHHS rules.

"Huh? You're going way overboard here. ONE commenter on this thread told a sad, tragic story of a double ectopic pregnancy that went untreated by a devout Catholic doctor who was clearly engaging in unethical malpractice, and suddenly such a thing has become "common practice"? Really? You honestly think that a sizable percentage of OB/GYN docs would endanger a woman's life or health in such a way simply because they're afraid she might consider abortion as a remedy? Get real."

My guess is that this legislation would protect this doc against a malpractice suit. The current "standard of care" is to make patients fully aware their medical condition and all of treatment options-which this quack failed to do. If and WHEN Bush signs this change in regulation, this sleezeball could argue that informing patients about the necessity/availability of abortion violated the dictates of his conscience.

Protecting docs who fail to fully inform patients is, I think, the true and really dangerous point of this change in regulations.

What monster lets a woman endure a DOUBLE ectopic pregnancy?

What monster rapes a woman before/during/ or after he performs her abortion?

What clueless, self-important idiot develops health curricula where a MALE teaches girls about their bodies, their periods, their options?

All three of these were common practice in this free land we call home.

Huh? You're going way overboard here. ONE commenter on this thread told a sad, tragic story of a double ectopic pregnancy that went untreated by a devout Catholic doctor who was clearly engaging in unethical malpractice, and suddenly such a thing has become "common practice"? Really? You honestly think that a sizable percentage of OB/GYN docs would endanger a woman's life or health in such a way simply because they're afraid she might consider abortion as a remedy? Get real.

Also, since when has the rape of women seeking abortions by their medical providers before/during/after the abortion procedures been a "common practice"? Don't most abortions usually involve more than one medical professional or assistant? And how exactly does one rape a woman during an abortion procedure anyway?

Finally, are you saying that men, simply because they're men, are incapable of knowing the basic facts of female sexual anatomy and physiology, and thus are incapable of teaching girls the essentials? Or are you arguing that it's inherently creepy, sleazy, inappropriate, or traumatic for girls to learn basic health facts about their bodies from a man?

Ideally, I guess, men's health would be taught to boys by men and women's health would be taught to girls by women, so that "book learning" could be supplemented by real-world experience and empathy, but most situations aren't ideal. When I was a student, my health teachers in junior high and high school were women, and they taught us boys about male sexual anatomy and physiology, desire and arousal, basic sexual mechanics, how to properly use condoms, the importance and procedure of testicular self-examinations to check for cancer, the symptoms and effects of STDs on the male body, good hygiene for uncircumcised males, etc. Sure, it was a bit embarrassing or awkward right at first, but everyone quickly got over it and it was fine. None of us, that I can recall, felt that it was creepy, sleazy, wrong, or traumatic, and none of us thought the female health teachers didn't know what they were talking about.

If boys can be successfully taught a sexual health curriculum about their bodies by women, then there's no reason the same can't also be true of girls being taught by men. I wonder if your strident opposition to the very idea has more to say about your own personal psychological and emotional issues than it does about anything else.