During the Obama administration, the Dept. of Health and Human Services re-wrote its own rules to expand beyond legally protected classes, says Dr. Jeff Barrows of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations.
“Prior to that time,” he points out, “the definition of ‘discrimination’ meant the usual things like discriminating on the basis of their sex, discriminating on the basis of race, discriminating on the typical things that you think of. But what the Obama administration did is they added in the words gender identity and pregnancy.”
Those radical changes were rolled back by the Trump administration but now the Biden administration is returning to those radical policies. Last month, HHS announced it is considering removing a Trump-era directive at the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) that demanded the federal government respect religious views as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Fox News, among other news outlets, obtained a draft memo describing HHS’s intention to end that respect for the religious views of doctors and nurses.
Roger Severino, who led the OCR in the Trump administration, told Fox News that HHS will “return to trampling people’s rights” as it did during the Obama administration if the agency follows through on its plan.
Bill Donohue, the pro-life Catholic activist, wrote in a LifeNews op-ed the Biden administration is knowingly and willingly targeting Catholic-operated hospitals and their faith-based policies on transgender surgeries and abortion, and even fertility treatments for married couples.
“The evidence shows that transgender rights and abortion rights are being pursued full throttle,” Donohue wrote. “Their success depends on the destruction of religious liberty exemptions put in place by the courts, lawmakers and administrative agencies.”
Barrows tells American Family News the impact of reversing religious-based protections could keep many future medical students from entering the field if they know their government despises their beliefs.
“I think it will impact practicing physicians,” he predicts. “It will begin to prevent them from doing certain things. It may drive some of them out of medicine.”
