Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 10, 2024 / 18:20 pm
The Biden administration announced a new rule change Tuesday that experts are saying threatens the rights of religious doctors and health care providers to refuse to perform abortions and transgender surgeries.
Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation and the former director of the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR), told CNA that the Biden administration’s rule change “constitutes a full-scale retreat from conscience enforcement by the Office for Civil Rights in the name of answering to the desires of the abortion lobby.”
The new rule, titled “Safeguarding the Rights of Conscience as Protected by Federal Statutes,” is scheduled to take effect on March 11. In a Jan. 9 press release announcing the new rule, the HHS said that the changes “would increase access to care and prevent discrimination.”
The rule formally rescinds certain provisions laid out by the HHS in 2019, when Severino was serving under the Trump administration. The 2019 rule guaranteed doctors and medical practitioners the ability to refuse to perform abortions for religious or conscience reasons. Due to several federal court rulings, the 2019 Trump rule never took effect; however, laws protecting conscience rights continue to remain on the books.