Attorneys with the Thomas More Society are defending health care workers and providers from being forced to participate in abortion and other procedures that violate their religious rights. The Thomas More Society is offering pro bono representation to pro-life medical professionals who believe that their right of conscience has been violated over abortion and related matters.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights has published new regulations, giving health care workers and providers the right to do their job while being protected from having to participate in activities that go against their deeply and sincerely held religious beliefs. These regulations provide recourse to individuals and health care entities that have been discriminated against on the basis of their exercise of conscience in HHS-funded programs.

“These new regulations and the accompanying commentary mention abortion 304 times, leaving no doubt that this administration is determined to protect pro-life doctors and health care workers from the atrocities being pushed into legislation by the abortion lobby,” stated Thomas Olp, Vice President and Senior Counsel for the Thomas More Society.

“Busy medical professionals won’t typically have the leisure to plow through this important, but lengthy, document,” noted Olp. “However, they need to be aware of several key right of conscience protections offered under these new HHS regulations.”

New HHS Regulations Include, but are not limited to:

• Protecting health care entities and employees who have conscience or religious objections related to performing, paying for, referring for, providing coverage of, or providing certain services, such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide, or providing or receiving training in abortion.
• Protecting health care professionals who decline to receive training in abortions or who attend medical schools that don’t require abortion training, and applicants for training or study who have conscience or religious beliefs relating to assisting or recommending abortions or sterilizations.
• Protecting individuals in a health service or research activity funded by an HHS program, where they decline to perform or assist in part of that program because of sincere religious beliefs or moral convictions.
• Protecting patients who object to certain procedures, including screenings and mental health treatment of children or occupational illness testing, and in other specific instances set forth by Congress.

Read the HHS’s FACTSHEET: Final Conscience Regulation for a comprehensive list of protections.

Olp suggests that current policies coming out of the HHS eliminate any question that the administration is deliberately taking a stand on behalf of individual rights. The mission of the Office for Civil Rights includes: “ensuring that HHS, state and local governments, health care providers, health plans, and others comply with federal laws that guarantee the protection of conscience and free exercise of religion and prohibit coercion and religious discrimination in HHS-conducted or funded programs.” The agency has publicly stated a deliberate focus on “conscience and religious freedom” to protect health care workers who have moral or religious objections to providing medical services, such as abortion, sterilization, or treating transgender patients.

The Thomas More Society has also taken up the standard in the battle to uphold the Protect Life Rule, which prohibits illegal government funding of abortion through Title X grants. The pro bono not-for-profit, national public interest law firm has filed amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs in support of the Protect Life Rule in courts in five states in response to eight lawsuits filed by Planned Parenthood and others to challenge the Trump administration rule.