Biden administration reduces ‘conscience clause’ protections
January 11, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: The Biden administration has announced new rules restricting the rights of health-care workers to refuse involvement in abortion.
The Department of Health and Human Services said that the new rules, which remove protections issued under the Trump administration, are necessary because “those portions are redundant, unlawful, confusing, or undermine the balance Congress struck between safeguarding conscience rights and protecting access to health care, or because significant questions have been raised as to their legal authorization.”
Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of Planned Parenthood, called the change “a step in the right direction.” Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation, who helped draft the Trump administration rules, said that the new rules mark “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.”
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Posted by: Randal Mandock -
Jan. 12, 2024 11:52 AM ET USA
Thanks to Amoris Laetitia (denial of reality of intrinsic evil), Ad Theologiam Promovendam (promotion of moral relativism), and Fiducia Supplicans (approval of intrinsic evil), the most anti-Catholic presidential administration in my lifetime feels completely unconstrained now to reverse Trump-era civil rights protections. The Church's new refusal to fully back a priest's decision not to bless immoral relationships has wide repercussions that will be felt everywhere in the coming months.
