Trying To Make This a Religious Nation

When religion becomes the driving force of the state, and when a nation's leaders rule based upon religious convictions, individual rights take a back seat to the mythical forces that the government leaders imagine are speaking to them. Since none of us can hear these imaginary conversations taking place inside the heads of our representatives, we are held helpless in their power. Did George W. Bush really hallucinate God telling him to attack Iraq? Did Dick Cheney really imagine God telling him that we needed to torture prisoners in order to further the war's efforts? Did Brownie envision a God who guided him in not providing relief to New Orleans following Katrina?

If you think this is all Washington jargon and that none of this stuff really touched your life, you may be right - for now. But if things continue in this fashion, you might soon find your own rights being relegated to the waste bin, and then it will be too late. Are you ready for the religious zealots to tell you what you can wear? Where you can go? With whom you can visit?

From the Washington Post a short while back...

A Bush administration proposal aimed at protecting health-care workers who object to abortion, and to birth-control methods they consider tantamount to abortion, has escalated a bitter debate over the balance between religious freedom and patients' rights.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing a draft regulation that would deny federal funding to any hospital, clinic, health plan or other entity that does not accommodate employees who want to opt out of participating in care that runs counter to their personal convictions, including providing birth-control pills, IUDs and the Plan B emergency contraceptive.

Conservative groups, abortion opponents and some members of Congress are welcoming the initiative as necessary to safeguard doctors, nurses and other health workers who, they say, are increasingly facing discrimination because of their beliefs or are being coerced into delivering services they find repugnant.

But the draft proposal has sparked intense criticism by family planning advocates, women's health activists, and members of Congress who say the regulation would create overwhelming obstacles for women seeking abortions and birth control.

There is also deep concern that the rule could have far-reaching, but less obvious, implications. Because of its wide scope and because it would -- apparently for the first time -- define abortion in a federal regulation as anything that affects a fertilized egg, the regulation could raise questions about a broad spectrum of scientific research and care, critics say.

"The breadth of this is potentially immense," said Robyn S. Shapiro, a bioethicist and lawyer at the Medical College of Wisconsin. "Is this going to result in a kind of blessed censorship of a whole host of areas of medical care and research?"

Critics charge that the proposal is the latest example of the administration politicizing science to advance ideological goals.