Joe Biden will likely overturn a pro-life rule President Donald Trump put in place that protects pro-life medical professionals from being forced to promote or perform abortions that kill unborn children.
As LifeNews reported last May, President Donald Trump issued new rules that further protect doctors, nurses and medical professionals who don’t want to be forced to do abortions or refer for them. Trump announced new regulations through the Department of Health and Human Services that will more effectively enforce existing federal laws that protect the conscience rights of healthcare providers.
Despite current law that has protected conscience rights for over 30 years, the lack of regulations resulted in confusion and a lack of awareness within the healthcare community, leaving healthcare personnel vulnerable to discrimination and forcing them to drop their specialties at a time of healthcare scarcity.
The 440 pages of new regulations, issued by HHS Secretary Alex Azar, provide regulatory backbone to the First Amendment conscience rights of Americans working in the medical profession and will help ensure that no doctor or nurse will be be forced to violate their conscience while serving patients.
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But Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against the pro-life protections. While the trump administration defended the pro-life rules in court, the Biden administration just abandoned the defense and told a federal court it’s weighing whether or not to drop the defense of the rules entirely.
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan on Friday granted a request by HHS to cancel oral arguments that had been set for March and put on hold consolidated suits brought by Democratic-led states and groups including Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union.
“New leadership at HHS is currently in the process of arriving at the agency and plans to reassess the issues that these cases present,” the Justice Department said in the filing. “It would therefore conserve the resources of the court and the parties to remove the consolidated appeals from the court’s argument calendar and place the appeals in abeyance.”
According to Planned Parenthood, the ability for women to kill their babies in abortions is more important than the right of medical professionals to opt out of aborting babies.
Although the Constitution and numerous federal laws provide robust protections for the conscience rights of medical professionals, these laws are being violated as doctors, nurses, and medical students are being compelled to participate in abortion. The regulations clarify what recourse is available to victims of discrimination under the law and what penalties the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Civil Rights may enforce for violations.
“This rule ensures that healthcare entities and professionals won’t be bullied out of the health care field because they decline to participate in actions that violate their conscience, including the taking of human life,” a statement from OCR Director Roger Severino said. “Protecting conscience and religious freedom not only fosters greater diversity in health care, it’s the law.
“Laws prohibiting government funded discrimination against conscience and religious freedom will be enforced like every other civil rights law,” Severino explained.
Several leading pro-life groups applauded the Trump administration for the new rules.
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