Trump Moves to Help Health Workers Who Have Religious Objections

• January 18 2018
• Zachary Tracer, Ivan Levingston

The Trump administration is moving to protect health-care workers who object to treating patients for moral or religious reasons.

The Trump administration is moving to protect health-care workers who object to treating patients for moral or religious reasons.

The civil-rights office at the Department of Health and Human Services is setting up a new division that will enforce laws that let health-care workers opt out of providing some care based on their religious views. It’s the latest move by the Trump administration to push policies important to its most ardent supporters through executive action.

“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,” Roger Severino, the director of the HHS civil-rights office, said in a statement.

In May, President Donald Trump ordered his agencies to “vigorously” enforce existing laws protecting religious freedom, including in health care. The new division may back health-care providers who object to abortion or contraception, or who don’t want to care for transgender individuals.

The move was criticized by groups representing transgender individuals.

“Any rule that grants a license to discriminate would be a disgrace and a mockery of the principle of religious freedom,” said Harper Jean Tobin, policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality. “That would be an invitation to deny life-saving care. The vast majority of the medical community is against any form of license to discriminate.”

The American Medical Association says in its ethical code that doctors shouldn’t discriminate against prospective patients based on characteristics like gender identity, sexual orientation or race. The organization also says that physicians should be able to act according to their conscience.