Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced two major actions to protect life and the conscience rights of Americans.

First, the HHS’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced a new proposed policy to enforce 25 existing statutory conscience protections for Americans involved in HHS-funded programs, that will protect the religious and conscience rights of doctors, nurses, and other professionals from being coerced into participating in medical procedures such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide that violate their consciences.

Second, HHS’ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued new guidance to state Medicaid directors restoring state flexibility to decide program standards. The letter issued today rescinds 2016 guidance that specifically restricted states’ ability to take certain actions against family-planning providers that offer abortion services. This policy will allow states to stop Medicaid funding from going to abortion providers, if they have broken the law. There were 15 states that moved to defund Planned Parenthood. Those efforts were stopped when the previous administration sent a letter to all 50 states claiming that defunding Planned Parenthood would put them at odds with federal law. This new policy will allow these states, and any others, to defund abortion providers.

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