New “provider conscience” regulations proposed by HHS could severely limit women’s access to contraception and other health care. During a public comment period, the department continued to frustrate advocates’ effort to comment on the new regulations.
The extremists are coming out of the closet with their real agenda: the assault on birth control.
There are only 13 days left to comment on the HHS regulations that allow physician’s to opt out of providing services like contraception and family planning to which they object – even if it’s in the best interest of the patient.
The new HHS provider conscience regulations aren’t a problem simply for women of childbearing age. Your body is now the tableau of conscience for whatever doctor or pharmacist you draw.
Once laws were designed to allow those who objected to abstain from participating in abortions. But Secretary Leavitt’s clear intent now is to allow these laws to apply to a larger set of health care services.
What I ask of you, Secretary Leavitt, is to clarify the new HHS regulations. Release a statement saying that pressing the definition of abortion to include contraception is an unacceptable distortion of these regulations.
HHS has released its proposed regulation to “help protect health care providers from [religious] discrimination.” The good news is it no longer attempts to re-define abortion to include birth control. But the regulation no longer defines pregnancy or abortion at all.
There’s no evidence that any birth control method prevents a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb. Why isn’t that a relief to pro-lifers?
After intense criticism in the mainstream media and from millions of Americans, HHS has removed an explicit redefinition of contraception as abortion from proposed regulations. In so doing, the agency may have created a much larger problem.
Millions of Americans know that contraception is not abortion. And 325,000 of them have signed a new MoveOn petition to block HHS draft regulations that would redefine contraception as abortion.
