“CHANGE IS COMING”
Existing federal and state laws protect health care workers who express religious objections to performing abortions and certain other procedures. HHS said the new division would focus on enforcing these laws, which "protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom.”
This move is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to advance the cause of religious liberty. In May, Trump issued an executive order stating the executive branch would “vigorously enforce Federal law’s robust protections for religious freedom.”
Then in October, the Justice Department, led by Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, released a memo outlining 20 principles of religious liberty, asserting “free exercise of religion includes the right to act or abstain from action in accordance with one’s religious beliefs,” and that this right extends to both “persons and organizations.”
Eric Hargan, acting HSS secretary, applauded Trump after Thursday’s announcement.
“This is to inform you that as a Catholic Hospital we would not be able to allow your surgeon to schedule this surgery here at St. Joseph’s”
“President Trump promised the American people that his administration would vigorously uphold the rights of conscience and religious freedom,” Hargan said. “That promise is being kept today,”
The administration of President George W. Bush put in place a rule widely interpreted as allowing health care providers to opt out of a range of services, but under President Barack Obama, HHS officials rewrote the rule in such a way as to narrow the scope of services health care providers could elect not to perform. The new division and the subsequently proposed rule released by HHS on Friday — titled Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care — will presumably reverse the Obama-era changes.
“Laws protecting religious freedom and conscience rights are just empty words on paper if they aren’t enforced," Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, said in a statement. "No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions, and the new division will help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination find justice.”
“For too long, governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming and it begins here and now," Severino said.
Prior to his HHS post, Severino was the director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, where he advocated for the Affordable Care Act’s nondiscrimination provision to exclude transgender people.