Our nation has a long history of protecting the beliefs of individuals and entities who object to certain activities based on religious and/or moral convictions. This is applicable in all areas of life but is particularly important for health care providers. Our nurses, doctors, and all health care providers should be free to live according to their sense of ethic. No one should ever be forced to perform procedures in a manner that violates their conscience.
The Department of Health and Human Services is directly impacted by these statutory protections and is working to ensure that their employees are never subjected to policies that “violate conscience, coerce, or discriminate.” They need our support today!
HHS has proposed a rule that gives responsibility to its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to ensure that the department and everything that falls within HHS’s purview will have full protection of the law.
HHS is currently taking comments on this rule, and they need to hear from all of us. Please take a moment to comment in support of HHS’s new conscience protections as they work to protect our constitutional liberties in all their programs.
The deadline is 11:59 PM ET on Tuesday, March 27, 2018. So, don’t delay!
Submit a Comment by clicking here.
Below is a sample comment you can copy and paste. But be sure to personalize it and give it your take. We want HHS to know these are not computer-generated messages, but the expressions of concerned citizens.
Please take a moment to write right now if you can. It is vital for them to hear from you today!
SAMPLE COMMENT:
I write to express my strong support for proposed regulation Docket HHS-OCR-2018-0002.
As a supporter of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, I have been terribly concerned about the federal government’s increased hostility towards people of faith in recent years.
As shown in cases like Zubik v. Burwell, where the government capriciously pressured the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their conscience, there seems to be a lack of good faith at the highest levels of government that is a real threat to liberty. Nobody wants to go through the ordeal the Little Sisters of the Poor had to go through (fighting all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court) just to be free to live according to the dictates of their conscience.
We are encouraged that current HHS leadership is recognizing this problem and taking steps to ensure that this sort of abuse is not imposed on health care workers in the future.
This is important for us as women, as is evidenced by the Little Sisters of the Poor’s example. Women have a long history of recognizing the deep value of religious freedom and charitable service. The contribution of so many women of faith to the poor and needy in our country, whether through public or private service, or through religious ministry, cannot be overestimated. Those contributions are a direct expression of faith that is protected by federal law. It should be honored, not frowned upon.
But in recent years, government has become increasingly comfortable with presenting a choice between violating deeply held religious beliefs or facing crippling fines that not only violate fundamental constitutional principles, but also have a chilling effect on religious expression and charity. A recent U.S. Supreme Court case dealt with an effort in California to force pro-life clinics to promote abortion, regardless of the infringement on conscience. Other efforts to force nurses and doctors to perform abortions in practice or even before they graduate medical school are a common dream of “reproductive rights” advocates.
HHS’ role in combating such attempts to force people of faith to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs is extremely important, given that many of the controversial subjects of the day (abortion, contraception, sexual relations outside of marriage, etc.) are directly related to the areas this agency oversees.
I commend you on this important effort.