The Biden administration has announced new rules restricting the rights of health-care workers to refuse involvement in abortion.
The Department of Health and Human Services said that the new rules, which remove protections issued under the Trump administration, are necessary because “those portions are redundant, unlawful, confusing, or undermine the balance Congress struck between safeguarding conscience rights and protecting access to health care, or because significant questions have been raised as to their legal authorization.”
Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of Planned Parenthood, called the change “a step in the right direction.” Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation, who helped draft the Trump administration rules, said that the new rules mark “a full-scale retreat from conscience enforcement by the Office for Civil Rights in the name of answering to the desires of the abortion lobby.”