The United State Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is urging Catholics to contact the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), asking that they remove provisions to proposed rulemaking on Section 1557 that could require all healthcare providers to perform abortion and gender transition procedures.
Section 1557 is the nondiscrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act. It protects people from discrimination on the basis of their sex in health care. But HHS has proposed a rule revising Section 1557, which would seriously impede Catholic hospitals, clinics, assisted living facilities, and health care workers from carrying out their work.
HHS is reinterpreting Section 1557 to impose new mandates about gender identity. According to the rule, it would be considered discrimination for a health care worker or Catholic hospital to object to performing gender transition procedures—such as the administration of puberty-blocking drugs or surgery to remove healthy body parts—regardless of whether that objection is a matter of clinical judgment or religious belief. The proposed rule also suggests that the government may refuse to honor the right of health care workers and providers not to perform or participate in abortions. To learn more, please visit the USCCB’s Do No Harm webpage.
Your comments can make a difference! Join the USCCB in encouraging HHS to clarify that “discrimination on the basis of sex” is not an abortion mandate, and that health care workers and medical facilities must be free to conscientiously object to gender transition procedures.
Comments to HHS must be submitted by the end of the day, Monday, October 3. To submit your comment, please click below:
