The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its long-awaited decision today on rescinding conscience regulations to protect health care providers from having to engage in medical procedures to which they object on religious or moral grounds. Because a real concern existed that the Obama Administration might repeal these 2008 regulations outright, the partial rescission could be construed as a partial victory for conscience protection advocates. But the accent is on the word partial—because the rescission strictly limits the scope of the regulations and contains plenty of room …
Vanderbilt University Medical Center made a welcome decision last week and removed from its nurse residency admission application a requirement that students admitted to its women’s health track agree to participate in training to provide abortions. The decision came just 24 hours after attorneys at the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit legal group, filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) challenging the requirement. Events moved so quickly after the complaint was filed that it is not at …
Today, the national media are lauding President Obama for seeking “common ground” on the abortion issue during his commencement speech yesterday at the University of Notre Dame. In an article entitled “Obama a Champion at Notre Dame,” Washington Post columnist Eboo Patel called the speech a “near perfect demonstration of public leadership in an environment of polarization.” If public leadership means saying what your audience wants to hear while pursuing your own hard-line agenda with gusto, then the author is right on target. The trouble is, the President’s words of …
On March 9, 2009, the Obama Administration proposed to rescind a regulation that protects the conscience rights of health care professionals such as doctors, nurses, and medical students. Today, Freedom2Care released a polling company poll showing that 63% of all Americans, and even 56% of adults who said they voted for President Barack Obama, say they support the old conscience protection rule. Next respondents were asked: Earlier this month, officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services introduced a rule change that would effectively eliminate the two-month-old conscience …
America is facing a shortage of qualified health care professionals, including doctors and nurses. The Health Services and Resources Administration (HRSA) has identified over 6,000 Primary Care Health Professional Shortage Areas across the country, with 64 million Americans living in them. According to HRSA, it would take over 16,000 new primary care doctors in these shortage areas to meet the need. The problem is even more acute in crucial specialties such as obstetrics and gynecology. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports that almost one third of women in …
Religious institutions have long been an essential part of health care delivery in our nation. Long before government programs began monopolizing the health care industry, religious institutions were providing care to the poor and most vulnerable. Today, Catholic health care facilities alone make up a third of the nation’s hospitals. As the federal government has encroached further and further into health care decision making, religious freedom advocates have passed a number of laws designed to protect the consciences of health care providers. But these laws have rarely been enforced. Seeking …
On March 9, 2009, the Obama Administration proposed to rescind a Bush Administration regulation protecting the conscience rights of health care professionals such as doctors, nurses, and medical students. This regulation implemented longstanding federal conscience protection laws, some of which have been on the books since the 1970s. These laws prohibit discrimination against health care providers who object to participating in abortion, sterilization, or other controversial medical procedures. Although federal conscience protections have been in place for years, very few health care providers are aware of their rights under these …
Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it.—Albert Einstein Individual liberty is elemental to what is means to be an American. But in recent years the personal liberty and freedom of conscience of our doctors, nurses, and pharmacists have been threatened. Although “conscience clause” protections have been federal law since the 1970s and strengthened over the years, doctors, nurses and other medical professionals have found themselves to be the targets of threats, including legal action, intended to coerce them into compliance with immoral and, and often, illicit …
