House Members Pressure President Bush to Back Off on "Conscience Clause" for Healthcare Workers

New Policy Could Limit Access to Emergency Contraception for Rape Victims, Birth Control, Prescriptions

July 23, 2008

This week, a group of 104 members of the House of Representatives wrote to President George W. Bush asking him to halt all action of the proposed Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation that would allow medical professionals to refuse to provide services which they find religiously objectionable.

Supporters of the Secular Coalition for America have already been actively writing HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt to suspend any effort to make these proposed draft regulations final. For more information on the Secular Coalition's position on these regulations, please see our Action Alert: Tell Leavitt the "Conscience Clause" is Unconscionable.

Excerpt from the Congressional members' letter to President Bush:

By extending far beyond the terms of the underlying statutes, the draft regulation could have a disastrous effect upon access to safe and effective birth control for millions of women across the country. Employees of federal grantees who do not wish to participate in abortion services currently do not have to. That has been true for decades. But under the regulation, any employee who wishes to deny a woman birth control could do so as well, invoking protection from "discrimination" to avoid any repercussions. Similarly, entire facilities getting state or local government support could refuse to make birth control available.

In addition, the proposed regulation would widely broaden the categories of healthcare entities who can demand protection for denying women access. The underlying statutory provisions are conceived of as "conscience clauses," which many people think relates to an individual provider being permitted to act on his or her personal religious or moral beliefs. And in fact, some are written to apply narrowly to individual providers or to training programs for providers. But the proposed regulation would apply a very broad definition of "health care entity" to enforcement of the underlying statutes, giving corporate entities such as HMOs, health insurance plans, or any other health business the claim to a "conscience" and the "right" to deny a woman access to birth control or other care.

These concerns are not hypothetical: the draft regulation makes quite clear that it intends to limit patient protections. In a section titled "The Problem," it criticizes state laws that require employers who offer drug benefits to include coverage of contraception; laws that require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape survivors; and laws that require pharmacies to fill patients' medical prescriptions even if individual pharmacists working there disagree.

What's more, all of these threatened effects could occur independently of the sphere of "personal beliefs" that the statutory provisions have been assumed to address. In some cases, HMOS or other health insurance companies could deny women access to birth control for no reason at all -- and then use the regulation to claim protection from "discrimination" if a state tries to enforce laws regarding access to contraception.

We urge you to halt all action on this proposed legislation.

The members who signed this letter are as follows:

Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif.; Rep. Robert A. Brady, D-Pa.; Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-Ore.; Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.; Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio; Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.; Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga.; Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.; Rep. John W. Olver, D-Mass.; Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis.; Rep. Rush D. Holt, D-N.J.; Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif.; Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y.; Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill.; Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-Va.; Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn.; Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif.; Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.; Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.; Rep. Allyson Y. Schwartz, D-Pa.; Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.; Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.; Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif.; Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev.; Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y.; Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.; Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va.; Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif.; Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa.; Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Mass.; Rep. John F. Tierney, D-Mass.; Rep. James P. Moran, D-Va.; Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii; Rep. Michael E. Capuano, D-Mass.; Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Kan.; Rep. Susan A. Davis, D-Calif.; Rep. Michael H. Michaud, D-Maine; Rep. Betty Sutton, D-Ohio; Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C.; Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y.; Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.; Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.; Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla.; Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr., D-Ga.; Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif.; Rep. Charlie Gonzalez, D-Texas; Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo.; Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif.; Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y.; Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla.; Rep. Harry E. Mitchell, D-Ariz.; Rep. Bobby L. Rush, D-Ill.; Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash.; Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J.; Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind.; Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.; Rep. Robert E. Andrews, D-N.J.; Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass.; Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash.; Rep. Albio Sires, D-N.J.; Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Rep. Hilda L. Solis, D-Calif.; Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt.; Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minn.; Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, D-Ohio; Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.