[CAF Note: This is great news…looking forward to successful implementation and actions!]
Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is pleased to announce the formation of a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division in the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR). The announcement will take place at an event at HHS headquarters from 10:30 a.m. to noon. It will be livestreamed here exit disclaimer icon. Speakers will include Acting Secretary Eric D. Hargan, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Representative Vicky Hartzler, Senator James Lankford, OCR Director Roger Severino, and special guests.
The Conscience and Religious Freedom Division has been established to restore federal enforcement of our nation’s laws that protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious freedom. OCR is the law enforcement agency within HHS that enforces federal laws protecting civil rights and conscience in health and human services, and the security and privacy of people’s health information. The creation of the new division will provide HHS with the focus it needs to more vigorously and effectively enforce existing laws protecting the rights of conscience and religious freedom, the first freedom protected in the Bill of Rights.
OCR already has enforcement authority over federal conscience protection statutes, such as the Church, Coats-Snowe, and Weldon Amendments; Section 1553 of the Affordable Care Act (on assisted suicide); and certain federal nondiscrimination laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion in a variety of HHS programs.
OCR Director Severino said, “Laws protecting religious freedom and conscience rights are just empty words on paper if they aren’t enforced. No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions, and the new division will help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination find justice. For too long, governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection, but change is coming and it begins here and now.”
Acting HHS Secretary Hargan said, “President Trump promised the American people that his administration would vigorously uphold the rights of conscience and religious freedom. That promise is being kept today. The Founding Fathers knew that a nation that respects conscience rights is more diverse and more free, and OCR’s new division will help make that vision a reality.”
To learn more about the new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, visit us at https://hhs.gov/conscience
.
To file a complaint with OCR based on a violation of civil rights, conscience or religious freedom, or health information privacy, visit us at https://www.hhs.gov/ocr/complaints.
HHS Announces New Conscience and Religious Freedom Division
“OCR Announces New Conscience and Religious Freedom Division. It will restore federal enforcement of our nation’s laws that protect the fundamental rights of conscience and religious freedom. ”
TWEET THIS
Seems a very slippery slope to me. While practitioners should not be forced to practice procedures such as elective abortion based on their moral convictions, what if a patient requires immediate termination of pregnancy to save her life. Does the physician have the right to deny service in that case if no alternative source is available in a timely manner?
On the same token, could a parent decline legally mandated vaccinations for their children based on moral considerations despite the law’s lack of exception.
It gets way too interesting from both perspectives…
Technology is turning the slope into a ski jump.
“No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions, and the new division will help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination find justice.”
Okay. What if you are a doctor and your religion is Lucifarianism? And you believe that some people should die? Does that mean this law will allow the Doctors and other supporting, unwitting staff to “assist suicide” their patients?
Or if your consciousness is an AI tasked secretly to manage patients, who’s been programmed with Lucifarianism, would the same scenario apply?
Don’t mean to be negative, but my world has changed in terms of what I know is possible now. Our City Council was greeted with the opening statements by a local religious group openly professing Satanism in August.
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=eab_1501864260
Typically this means a doctor can not be forced to do something against his or her moral convictions. It does not mean that a doctor is free to break the law or impose their morals on anyone else, including without disclosure.