It just keeps getting deeper...From the Slimes

The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their "religious beliefs or moral convictions."

It would also prevent hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices and drugstores from requiring employees with religious or moral objections to "assist in the performance of any part of a health service program or research activity" financed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

But three officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, including its legal counsel, whom President George W. Bush appointed, said the proposal would overturn 40 years of civil rights law prohibiting job discrimination based on religion.

The counsel, Reed Russell, and two Democratic members of the commission, Stuart Ishimaru and Christine Griffin, also said that the rule was unnecessary for the protection of employees and potentially confusing to employers.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 already prohibits employment discrimination based on religion, Russell said, and the courts have defined "religion" broadly to include "moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong, which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views."

Obama has said the proposal will raise new hurdles to women seeking reproductive health services, like abortion and some contraceptives. Michael Leavitt, the health and human services secretary, said that was not the purpose.

This piece comes from a subsidiary of the New York Times, and if you can believe it, is critical of a rule issued by President Bush. (Quick put on your shocked face!) The substance of the rule as I read it, States “you can’t force anyone to participate in activities they actually believe are wrong.”

The Civil rights act says, “you can’t refuse to employ a person because of race, religion or sexual orientation”, nowhere does it infer that after you have hired a person, and they refuse to perform their job for moral, ethical or religious reasons, that they can’t be terminated for non performance. If an employee won’t work, then they don’t have to be paid.

Consider the quandary of a health care worker who was hired under a job description that did not include abortion, and as an expansion in the business plan, is now required to assist or perform abortions.

Most of us would quit and be dammed to the consequences. Would anyone try to convince me that people wouldn’t be forced out of their jobs, because “we can’t lose the federal money”? Those people who can offer care, with the exception of abortion, have as much right to a job as anyone else.

This rule doesn’t say “You can use religion to avoid hiring someone.” It says ”You can’t fire me because I can’t do this due to my beliefs.”

As to Obama’s statement, I fail to see the right to an abortion as “reproductive health services”. If you consider the statements of women who have had abortions, it could be quite the contrary.
Once again the Obamasiah shoots from the hip with out thinking through the issue. I have heard more times than I can count, every one deserves a job. Why not people who don’t want to kill the unborn?

Why should those workers be discriminated against because they just can’t kill a baby?


emphasis mine