The Bush Administration has proposed regulations that could drastically expand the ability of health care providers to refuse to provide health care that does not fit with their religious or moral beliefs.  Depending on how the regulations are interpreted, they could diminish access to health care in the following ways:

 

Services in hospitals, clinics, and training and research facilities:

Ø      The regulations affect all HHS funded entities and could allow employees to refuse to provide referrals or even basic information about services they disagree with.

Ø      The regulations could force federally funded health care institutions, including hospitals and clinics, to hire or retain an employee or potential employee who refuses to perform essential job duties. 

 

Interference with State law:

Ø      The rule could impede the enforcement of laws enacted to protect patients’ health, including emergency care laws and professional misconduct laws that require health care providers to treat patients in need of care.

Ø      The regulation could jeopardize New York’s ability to enforce its law requiring provision of emergency contraception to women in the emergency room, as well as its contraceptive equity law, which requires employers that provide prescription drug coverage to cover contraception. 

 

Impact on vulnerable populations:

Ø      This regulation targets the most vulnerable Americans—low income women, young women, and immigrant women who rely on publicly funded clinics. 

Ø      Without the contraceptive services provided at publicly funded clinics, there would be 46 percent more unintended pregnancies (1.4 million more) annually in the United States than currently occur. 

 

End-of-life decisions:

Ø      These regulations could reduce patients’ ability to make end-of-life decisions with dignity when facing terminal illness.

Ø      Hospitals could be unwilling or unable to provide the desired care because of threats from employees who have religious objections.

 

Prevention and care for HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections:

Ø      The regulations could allow medical professionals to refuse to discuss safer sex and HIV/STI prevention with at-risk patients because of objections to contraception or the patients’ sexual activities or partners.

Ø      The regulations could allow medical professionals to refuse services to some people living with HIV/AIDS because of ideological views about how they contracted the virus.

 

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and marital status:

Ø      These regulations could allow doctors to refuse to provide reproductive technology assistance and fertility care for same sex couples, unmarried couples, or single individuals seeking to have children.

 

Post-sexual assault care:

Ø      The regulations weaken New York’s EC in the ER law, which requires all hospitals in New York State to offer emergency contraception to women in their emergency rooms following a sexual assault.