President Joe Biden continued his methodical war against people of faith last week when his Department of Health and Human Services issued new regulations rescinding conscience protections for doctors and nurses who are forced by their employers to perform procedures that violate their beliefs.
At a time when many states are mandating healthcare professionals perform highly controversial procedures such as abortion, sterilization, assisted suicide, and gender transition surgeries, Biden’s actions will only force more religious observers out of the healthcare profession entirely.
The HHS is charged with being the first responder for over a dozen federal laws designed to protect religious freedom, including the Coats-Snowe Amendment, the Church Amendments, the Weldon Amendment, and various protections written into Medicare and Medicaid. In 2019, the Trump administration issued new regulations that beefed up these religious liberty protections, making it clear that the laws were primarily concerned with “the free exercise of religious beliefs.”
Democrats in Congress are too beholden to the abortion lobby to do anything legislatively to fix what Biden has done. And even if they did, the Biden administration has already inserted a balancing test into the enforcement of these laws that is nowhere in the statute. It will be up to the courts to set Biden straight after other doctors or nurses have been forced to violate their consciences or lose their jobs. It shouldn’t have to come to that, but that is where we are.
