The President Giveth and the President Taketh Away

A story that is appalling in all its appalling complexity — Obama to rescind Bush abortion rule. News that "President Barack Obama wants to rescind a Bush administration rule that strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse for moral reasons to perform abortions" will surely be milked for all its worth by G.O.P. operatives within the prolife movement.

It should be noted, however, that "Federal law has long forbidden discrimination against health care professionals who refuse to perform abortions or provide referrals for them on religious or moral grounds." What Mr. Obama seeks to rescind is Mr. Bush's "requirement that institutions that get federal money certify their compliance with laws protecting the rights of moral objectors."

Both Mr. Bush's move and Mr. Obama's counter-move serve to consolidate power at the federal level. Federal money is used as a weapon on those institutions who have become, by statist design, dependent on it. Let us put not our trust in presidents or political parties but, so to speak, in "Apollo the physician, Æsculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses" by whom doctors once swore to "perform the utmost respect for every human life from fertilization to natural death and reject abortion that deliberately takes a unique human life" — The Hippocratic Oath.