{"id":557,"date":"2012-02-21T19:53:26","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T03:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.consciencelaws.org\/?p=557"},"modified":"2012-02-21T19:53:26","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T03:53:26","slug":"obama-administration-guts-healthcare-conscience-regulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.consciencelaws.org\/?p=557","title":{"rendered":"Obama Administration Guts Healthcare Conscience Regulation"},"content":{"rendered":"

National Right to Life News<\/a><\/em>
\n21 February 2011
\nReproduced with permission<\/em><\/p>\n

Jonathon Imbody*<\/a><\/p>\n

True civil rights protection requires cultural change. A long-term program of education within the medical community and in the public is needed to help build awareness among conscientious healthcare professionals of their civil rights and a respect for those rights by all.<\/h5>\n

On February 18 the Obama administration gutted the only federal regulation protecting conscientious healthcare professionals from discrimination.<\/p>\n

While three long-standing federal conscience-protecting laws remain intact, the conscience-protecting regulation had been promulgated under the Bush administration to remedy documented pervasive discrimination against pro-life physicians and others in disregard of the anti-discrimination laws.<\/p>\n

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius effectively eviscerated a sensible Bush-era regulation that had finally put teeth to bipartisan federal civil rights laws enacted over the past three decades. Those anti-discrimination laws were passed, all after the Supreme Court\u2019s 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, as a way to keep physicians, nurses, hospitals and others from being forced out of medicine simply for following life-affirming ethical standards such as the Hippocratic oath.<\/p>\n

But abortion advocates hyperventilated when it appeared that those laws would actually be implemented and enforced by the conscience protection regulation, which took effect in January 2009.<\/p>\n

Cecile Richards of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America had said, \u201cIt is going to cause chaos among providers across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had said: \u201cIt threatens the health and well-being of women and the rights of patients across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, none of their doomsday predictions even faintly materialized in the over two years since the original regulation took effect. In explaining Friday\u2019s regulation change, HHS presented no evidence whatsoever of any hindrance to any patient, procedure or prescription. The complete lack of evidence didn\u2019t seem to matter a whit, despite President Obama\u2019s vow in his Inaugural Address to \u201crestore science to its rightful place.\u201d<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s radical action again suggests tone deafness to the American public. Of the over 300,000 comments HHS received regarding rescission, twice as many opposed rescission as supported it. The Polling Company in 2009 conducted a nationwide scientific polling of the public and also of faith-based healthcare professionals. The results revealed that:<\/p>\n