Lovely parting gifts...

Despite the flurry of press coverage lauding the Bush administration's "unprecedented cooperation" with the Obama transition team, the outgoing administration is quietly passing dozens of deeply offensive and highly partisan rules, corporate giveaways, presidential directives dismantling environmental protections and other pet right wing projects. (Over ninety of them at last count.)

The medical "right to refuse" rule just passed is an example of these, designed to:

"...protect the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience," said outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.

Is that an Orwellian bit of doublespeak or what?

This means that a Emergency room nurse opposed to birth control can refuse emergency contraception to a rape victim, or even to inform the patient that such a thing exists. Receptionists can refuse to make appointments for patients whose medical choices they disagree with. Doctors could legally withhold information about birth defects in a fetus if they felt it might increase the chances the mother would elect to have an abortion.

This "right" to deprive people of their legal health care choices based on religious objection is an appalling "parting gift" to the evangelicals, and a slap in the face to the electorate who overwhelmingly rejected the Bush administration's policies. As usual with this deeply mendacious administration, the public face hides a sinister and narrowly defined agenda.