Why don't Bush's rules regarding "right of conscience" protect anesthesiologists?

[ck4829]

The outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new "right of conscience" rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that healthcare workers also may refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.

It also seeks to cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to "an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments," the draft rule said.

The "conscience" rule could set the stage for an abortion controversy in the early months of Barack Obama's administration.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-na-conscience2-2008dec02,0,1244120.story

Let's say I am an anesthesiologist against the death penalty, how is my conscience protected if I am ordered (as sometimes happens) to monitor an execution?

[WillParkinson]

1. Give it time....

And it won't protect death, only life. Duh.

(Yes, sarcasm.)

[ColbertWatcher]

2. Good question.

That tricky double-edged sword that always trips the GOP ideologues.

Kick and rec.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

3. doctors do not participate in state sponsored executions.

That is one of the problems with them. No medical professional will participate, so untrained prison guards have to insert IVs and administer drugs.

[struggle4progress]

7. That depends on the state: in NC, doctors have been involved in executions, though

in the last few years there has been a really beautiful political fight about it

[Lint Head]

4. Letting a Mother die because her fetus is in it's 7 month and has

a brain growing outside if it's head is immoral.
:dem:

[onenote]

5. not really

The OP suggests that anethesiologists are sometimes ordered to monitor an execution. I would be interested in seeing some substantiation of that claim. My understanding is that the AMA has declared it unethical for medical personnel to participate in executions and that while the state sometimes tries to force doctors to participate, they have not been successful in those efforts.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=190836

I actually have no problem with medical personnel being allowed not to perform certain procedures as a matter of conscience, provided that (a) they are not state employees; (b) there is a medical emergency exception where they must perform life saving treatment; and (c) they are forbidden from discriminating based on who the patient is.

However, to the extent the new rules would go well beyond that, and would even allow medical personnel to refuse to provide information about certain safe, legal medical procedures, they are an abomination that hopefully will be reversed immediately.

[Lars39]

6. Anesthesiologists are doctors.

[mondo joe]

8. Funny how his rules don't apply to soldiers either.

Per Bushco: You can opt out of a job you are employed to do based on your conscience, but you can;t opt out of war for the same reason.

[Cerridwen]

9. Because "right of conscience" is code for controlling women's

sexuality/bodies through "religious" indoctrination of "health care providers" and really has little to do with health, health care, or medicine.

Just as the marketing, sound-bite, "pro-life" has little to do with, ya know, actually caring about Life.

Each is but a different head of the hydra.

[Bunny]

10. When the first doctor, nurse, or OR tech refuses to perform a vasectomy

because their "conscience" won't allow it, please notify me. Until then, I have trouble believing that it's anything other than their bizarre desire to control womens sexuality and reproduction.

[spanone]

11. get these monsters out of office N O W