WASHINGTON — The Alliance Defense Fund submitted a letter Friday to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt disputing the claims of pro-abortion groups critical of a proposed rights of conscience rule. The rule would provide protections for health care workers who have a moral objection to prescribing abortion-inducing drugs.
“No one should be allowed to decide for someone else that an innocent life is worthless,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “Pro-life health care workers should be allowed to abide by their beliefs.”
“Regulations by the Department of Health and Human Services should rightly recognize that abortion, whether caused by drugs or any other method, is still abortion. Protecting health care workers who have a moral objection to participating in such abortions is consistent with laws that have been on the books for decades,” Bowman said.
Pro-abortion special interest groups attacked the proposal, an amendment to Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations, because they object to protecting doctors who oppose the abortion of very young pre-born children.
Since then, the amendment has been modified, but ADF attorneys say the final version still applies conscience protection “broadly” and requires that funding recipients certify that they “will not require involvement in procedures that violate an individual’s conscience as part of any part of any health service program.”
“Despite the allegations of fringe pro-abortion groups, broadly applying the conscience protection to include objection to the abortion of embryos before implantation is legally unassailable,” the ADF letter states. “Such a scope is supported by the language and context of the statutes as well as relevant medical science and legislative history.... The Department should ignore the rhetoric of abortion extremists who themselves oppose rights of conscience, and instead adopt proposed regulations protecting conscience in this broad manner.”
The full text of the ADF letter is available at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/HHSletter.pdf.
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
www.telladf.org
Related Information
ADF official comment on Conscience Rescission Proposal submitted to HHS, 4.6.2009