The Biden administration has “declared open season” on the conscience rights of medical professionals by rolling back Trump-era protections that allowed healthcare workers to refuse to perform procedures that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs, such as abortions and sterilizations.
The Department of Health and Human Services released the final rule on Tuesday that partially rescinds the Trump administration’s 2019 policy that removed federal funding for health facilities that required workers to provide services that violated their conscience. The decision has prompted strong conservative backlash.
“Everywhere they can and have now declared, effectively declared open season on people of faith who dissent, especially in the medical field,” former President Donald Trump’s HHS Office of Civil Rights director Roger Severino told the Washington Examiner in response to the new rule.
Severino said the several conscience protection statutes passed by Congress and enforced by HHS are the administration’s biggest impediment to expanding abortion access via federal health regulations.
“Everywhere they could, they have inserted abortion politics into the healthcare system,” Severino said. “They’ve abandoned enforcement of these conscience protection laws.”
The new rule comes as many states have implemented strict limitations on abortions and gender transition medicine for minors.
“Protecting conscience rights and ensuring access to health care are critically important, no matter who you are, where you live, who you love, or your faith and conscience,” HHS OCR director Melanie Fontes Rainer said in a press release.
HHS officials also said the new rule is an attempt to strike a balance between the conflicting conscience rights of healthcare providers and patients.
Fontes Rainer says the rule “advances conscience protections, access to health care, and puts our health care system on notice that we will enforce the law.”
Severino said, however, that the endorsement of the rule by the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Alexis McGill Johnson, should be a signal that it is not conscience-neutral.
“The most harmful aspects of the now-rescinded rule would have dramatically limited people’s access to health care and information,” McGill Jonson said. “It’s simple: No one should be denied health care.”
“Americans shouldn’t be forced to violate their ethical and religious beliefs,” Mat Bowman said of legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom. “Doctors, nurses, and other medical providers should enjoy this same constitutional protection, free to live and work in a manner consistent with their faith.”
But Severino says this action is just the “cherry on top when it comes to the Biden administration’s assaults on people of conscience.”
“They’ve moved to put conscience and religious freedom back in the basement when it comes to the hierarchy of civil rights,” Severino said. “It’s insulting to people of faith.”
Severino said federal conscience protection rights for healthcare workers are even more important in the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that places abortion policy under state authority.
“The solution is an administration that’s willing to respect the law,” Severino said when asked what remedy would be necessary to reverse the negative consequences of the rule.
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Severino also called on Congress to act to undo the “regulatory retreat” away from religious liberty, utilizing the power of the purse as leverage.
“Congress should step in and correct this injustice because what [HHS] is doing is a dereliction of duty and treating people of faith and conscience as second-class citizens,” Severino said.
