Provider Clause Is Dangerous

I have serious objections to the provider clause in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

PROVIDER CONSCIENCE PROTECTIONS.—No individual health care provider or health care facility may be discriminated against because of a willingness or an unwillingness, if doing so is contrary to the religious or moral beliefs of the provider or facility, to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

A 21 year-old Tampa woman was wrongly incarcerated after she reported being raped during the Gasparilla event. A jail health care worker refused to give the victim a second morning after pill. The female health care worker refused to administer the morning after pill because it was against her religious beliefs. TPD spokeswoman Laura McElroy said the health care worker acted against policy.

Democrats need to stop pandering to the Christian Right. The Senate bill contains $50 million for abstinence-only sex education. An Oxford University study found abstinence-only sex education did not prevent teenagers from having sex.

Researchers found none of the abstinence-only programmes had an impact on the age at which individuals lost their virginity, whether they had unprotected sex, the number of sexual partners, the rates of sexually transmitted diseases or the number of pregnancies.

One trial did show a short-term benefit with participants reporting that they were less likely to have had sex in the month following one abstinence-only programme.

But the researchers said this finding was offset by six other trials that showed the programmes had no effect on the participants' recent sex lives.

Christian fundamentalism does not belong in health care. Ever.