Another Back Hand Swipe at Women

In the waning days of his administration, President Bush is attempting to push through several policies that will hurt women. One of them, the “right of conscience” proposal allows doctors, nurses and other health care officials to refuse to participate in any procedure they consider morally or religiously objectionable. Administration officials say the rule allows Christians to say “no” to procedures like abortion. You can read the press release here.

This is not a new policy. It has been around in some form since the 70's. What is new is that this new wording in the proposed regulation is drawn broad enough to include artificial insemination and birth control procedures. In other words if a pharmacist does not want to fill a prescription for birth control pills for a married woman, he is not required to do so. Similarly, if a doctor has a problem with lesbianism, he can refuse to artificially inseminate a couple if they come in trying to have a child.

This rule also increases the number of health care workers covered, meaning that a person whose only job is to clean the medical instruments used in a procedure can opt not to do his job if that procedure offends him morally or religiously.

The Bush plan, according to reports, is to get the measure on the books by December 20th. It will apply to any facility or hospital receiving federal funds.

The American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association are already on record as opposing the new language of this proposal stating that the rule could compromise and does politicize women’s health.

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology issued a statement calling for limits on the so called “moral objections “ clause..

“Although respect for conscience is important, conscientious refusals should be limited if they constitute an imposition of religious or moral beliefs on patients [or] negatively affect a patient's health," ACOG's Committee on Ethics said. It also said physicians have a "duty to refer patients in a timely manner to other providers if they do not feel that they can in conscience provide the standard reproductive services that patients request.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt says the issue is solely focused on abortion and he will issue the new order before the December 20th deadline.

Enactment of the proposal by the deadline will tie President elect Obama’s hands and will mean that Congress will have to act to rescind the order.

Taming Your Inner Carnivore

Women should pay attention to two extensive scientific studies released this week. The studies deal with the links between eating red meat and how effective vitamins are as a preventative for heart disease in women.

You can read the full report on red meat and breast cancer in the Archives of Internal Medicine magazine. In a nutshell the report says the more red meat you eat, the greater your risk for breast cancer.

“More” is defined as 1 and ½ servings per day which makes women twice as likely to develop hormone related breast cancer, as those women who ate fewer than three portions of red meat per week.

The second report is the longest running study of how, or if, vitamin supplements help prevent heart disease in women. This study was conducted by doctors from Harvard who concluded that the supplements, don’t help much at all. Although there were some hints that vitamin C may do a little something for high risk women. That conclusion, say doctors, needs more study.

The vitamin study has been going on for a decade and more than 8000 women were randomly given vitamin C, E and beta carotene. Another 5000 women were given folic acid and vitamin B for seven years.

The doctors concluded there was “minimal evidence” of cardiovascular benefit. This study continues.

In the meat study, 90,000 women between the ages of 26 and 46, were looked at, and questioned over a 20 year period. They were divided into five groups based on how much meat they ate on a regular basis.

Meat consumption was linked to breast cancers caused by the hormones estrogen and progesterone, but not to non hormonal cancers.

The women who ate the most meat were also likely to be smokers and overweight. Even taking these factors into account, doctors say they were able to document the red meat cancer connection.

The bottom line to all this.....cut down on red meat, stop smoking and exercise. We keep hearing that.

Are we listening?