"The doctor-patient relationship." For more than 20 years, conservative propagandists and their Republican allies have used that four-word bludgeon to beat back universal health care reform. In 1994, GOP strategist Bill Kristol warned that "the Clinton Plan is damaging to the quality of American medicine and to the relationship between the patient and the doctor." Kristol's successful crusade to derail Bill Clinton's reform effort was greatly aided by future "death panels" fabulist Betsy McCaughey, who wrongly warned that Americans would even lose the right to see the doctor of their choice. Twelve years later, President George W. Bush proclaimed, "Ours is a party that understands the best health care system is when the doctor-patient relationship is central to decision-making."
With the victory of Barack Obama in 2008, GOP spinmeister Frank Luntz told Republicans obstructing the Affordable Care Act in Congress to once again "call for the 'protection of the personalized doctor-patient relationship.'" And during the 2012 campaign, the GOP platform declared the party would "ensure the doctor-patient relationship."
But when it comes to abortion and women's reproductive health, the GOP mantra about protecting "doctor-patient" isn't just demagoguery of the basest kind. It is a cruel and vicious hoax. Even as the nation's abortion rate has dropped to a 40 year low, dozens of draconian restrictions enacted in Republican-controlled states are mandating that physicians lie to their patients, perform unnecessary procedures in needlessly regulated facilities and even withhold potentially lifesaving care. Now, Republicans aren't just standing over the shoulders of American doctors who put their patients' health first; they want to put them in prison, too.
Until very recently, the GOP push to put women's health care providers behind bars was largely kept behind the scenes. Few paid attention in 2007 when GOP presidential contender Mike Huckabee explained he hoped to "find some way to sanction" doctors who took money to provide abortions to women if he succeeded in outlawing the procedure or when his former pro-choice rival Mitt Romney endorsed "penalties" including "losing a license or having some other kind of restriction." Fewer still must have been paying attention in 2004 when then Oklahoma GOP Senate candidate Tom Coburn declared:
"I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life."Please read below the fold for more on this story.
