Rev. Danny Fisher

I’ve posted twice in the past year (here and here) about an incredibly hot potato of a draft regulation “aimed at protecting health-care workers who object to abortion, and to birth-control methods they consider tantamount to abortion.” The Associated Press is now reporting that the Bush Administration has implemented the regulation. As I’ve said in the past, there is no small amount of controversy about the rule. For some healthcare workers, it offers a way for employees to opt out of participating in procedures they “find repugnant” and might be pressured to perform anyway. For others, the rule makes things that much hard for women to exercise their full range of reproductive rights. The regulation, though, has implications far beyond reproductive rights: on MSNBC the other night, a guest considered a hypothetical scenario in which a Christian Scientist working in a pharmacy might refuse to fill a prescription for an antiobiotic and be protected by this regulation. Get the full story here.