Biden’s Attack on Conscience and Religious Freedom
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The department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that protect providers, individuals, and other health care entities from having to provide, participate in, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for, services such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide.
But, instead of enforcing these protections, Biden’s HHS would repeal these protections and force conscientious objectors into performing medical procedures that they object to morally, or risk losing their jobs.
It is un-American to threaten a worker with the loss of a job for refusing to perform abortions, surgeries that amputate healthy body parts, and other morally objectionable procedures. Deeply held moral and/or religious beliefs are supposed to be protected by the federal government, not abandoned.
On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (“USCCB”), we submit the following comments on the proposed rule to protect conscience rights in health care. Pope Francis has repeatedly affirmed the fundamental importance of the right of conscience.
In the preamble to the proposed rule, the Department requested comment on whether the 2019 Rule provided sufficient clarity to minimize the potential for harm resulting from any ambiguity and confusion that may exist because of the rule, and whether any statutory terms require additional clarification (beyond, we presume, the clarity provided by the statutes themselves). At least in relation to the proposed rule’s approach of not defining any terms evenin the case of statutes under which it has explicit rulemaking authority, the answer to both questions is surely yes.
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