"Bush plan would blunt state birth control law"

Pro-abortion/contraception groups are hopping mad about it, too:

A proposed Bush administration regulation on contraception and abortion would stop California from enforcing a state law that requires Catholic hospitals and charities to provide birth control coverage for thousands of female employees, state Attorney General Jerry Brown and family-planning advocates said Wednesday. (San Francisco Chronicle)

Sadly, I think they are going about this the wrong way:

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department regulation, still in draft form, would define abortion as including certain methods of contraception and would prohibit states and other recipients of federal funds from penalizing health care workers who refused to provide those services because of religious or moral beliefs.

Why not simply include contraception under the penumbra of treatments that health care workers are allowed to refuse because of religious or moral beliefs? The evidence supporting the claim that contraceptives are also abortifacients has been legitimately challenged.

In other words, sooner or later, if not already, contraceptives will not have abortifacient side effects. Then where will we be when Catholic individuals and organizations wish to refuse distributing them?

update: Dawn Eden has brought it to my attention that the San Francisco Chronicle is actually (intentionally or not) playing into the pro-choice talking points, and is not giving us the straight story.

In actuality, Secretary Mike Leavitt of the US Dep. of Health & Human Services agrees with me:

An early draft of the regulations found its way into public circulation before it had reached my review. It contained words that lead some to conclude my intent is to deal with the subject of contraceptives, somehow defining them as abortion. Not true.

The Bush Administration has consistently supported the unborn. However, the issue I asked to be addressed in this regulation is not abortion or contraceptives, but the legal right medical practitioners have to practice according to their conscience and patients should be able to choose a doctor who has beliefs like his or hers.

There, doesn't that sound far more reasonable?

Planned Parenthood has its formidable attack machine trained on Mr. Leavitt, who responds to them here:

So, according to Ms. Gallagher’s ideology, if a person goes to medical school they lose their right of conscience. Freedom of expression and action is surrendered with the issuance of a medical degree.

There is something I’d like to point out to Ms Gallagher and the people she represents. It is currently a violation of three separate federal laws to compel medical practitioners to perform a procedure that violates their conscience.

... I want to reiterate. If the Department of Health and Human Services issues a regulation on this matter, it will aim at one thing, protecting the right of conscience of those who practice medicine. From what I’ve read the last few days, there’s a serious need for it.

Continue fighting the good fight, sir.