The President’s Council on Bioethics? More like the President’s Council on Dissing Women’s Reproductive Health Needs!

by Gretchen Borchelt, Senior Counsel
National Women’s Law Center

Last week, the President’s Council on Bioethics met to discuss religious restrictions in health care. It could have been an opportunity for preeminent providers and scholars to wrestle with the serious issue of balancing providers’ religious beliefs with patients’ need for access to health care services. Instead, it quickly became obvious that many Council members had an agenda – one that would protect religious beliefs to the detriment of patient health. 

The Council attacked the position statement on refusals by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. ACOG’s position recognizes providers’ right to refuse while at the same time saying that refusals should be limited if they “constitute an imposition of religious or moral beliefs on patients, negatively affect a patient’s health, are based on scientific misinformation, or create or reinforce racial or socioeconomic inequalities.” ACOG believes that providers have a duty to refer patients when they refuse services and a duty to provide care in an emergency situation. Sounds reasonable, right? Not to the Council – one member called the position partisan and another even went so far as to reference Nazi doctors participating in the Holocaust!

The Council could not even agree on whether reproductive health services – abortion, contraception, sterilization, and in vitro fertilization – count as health services. One councilmember compared these services to face lifts. Another said a lesbian seeking IVF treatment “has very little to do with what we ordinarily consider medicine or health.” It was shocking to hear these “experts” disagree with what we know to be true – that reproductive health is key to women’s health. It’s not a “lifestyle choice,” as one member categorized it.

You can see the comments we submitted to the Council here – in our comments, we discuss how refusals impede women’s access to critical services, as well as what the law says on refusals. If you want to read the transcript of the meeting, you can find it here.

I’m angry and upset about what I heard at the meeting. But I’m trying to see the Council meeting as just another reason to keep educating people about the dangers of religious restrictions and to keep fighting against the proposed Bush Administration regulation that would expand them.