Obama To Repeal Conscience Rule

As we noted last year, the Bush Administration had implemented a new rule permitting health-care workers to refuse to give treatment that violates the workers' personal, moral, or religious beliefs.  Reports today indicate that the Obama Administration will soon begin the process of rescinding that protection.  From the Washington Post:

The Office of Management and Budget announced this morning that it was reviewing a proposal to lift the controversial "conscience" regulation, the first step toward reversing the policy. Once the OMB has reviewed the proposal it will be published in Federal Register for a 30-day public comment period. "We are proposing rescinding the Bush rule," said an official with the Health and Human Services Department, which drafted the rule change.

The administration took the step because the regulation was so broadly written that it could provide protections to health-care workers who object not only to abortion but also to a wide range of health-care services, said the HHS official, who asked not to be named because the process had just begun.

"We've been concerned that the way the Bush rule is written it could make it harder for women to get the care they need. It is worded so vaguely that some have argued it could limit family planning counseling and even potentially blood transfusions and end-of-life care," the official said.

After the 30-day comment period, the regulation could be lifted entirely or it could be modified to make the protections more specific, the official said.

"We support a tightly written conscience clause. We recognize and understand that some providers have objections about abortion, and we want to make sure that current law protects them," the official said. "We want to be thoughtful about this."

Obviously, the devil will be in the details; it'll be interesting to see how limited the wording of the rule becomes.

-JH