Leavitt: ‘Conscience’ rule won’t affect birth control

A new Bush administration regulation to protect anti-abortion physicians from workplace discrimination does not include a controversial proposal that critics said would define some forms of birth control as abortions.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued the regulation Thursday, insisting that its sole purpose is to enforce “conscience clauses” in existing federal laws, not to restrict access to contraceptives.

{mosads}“This regulation is not about contraception. It’s about abortion and conscience,” HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a conference call with reporters.

“There is nothing in this rule that would change in any way a patient’s right to a [legal] procedure,” Leavitt said. “This specifically goes to the issue of abortion and conscience as it affects that issue,” he said.

The underlying federal laws were enacted to prevent medical facilities from coercing healthcare providers into performing or assisting with abortions.

An earlier version of the regulation, however, triggered anger among lawmakers and groups that support abortion rights, who protested that its definition of “abortion” was too broad and could make it harder for women to obtain birth control, including the pill, IUDs and the emergency contraceptive “morning-after pill.”

After that backlash, HHS decided not to include a definition of abortion in the regulation issued Thursday. “We did not feel it necessary to define abortion,” Leavitt said. “This regulation relies upon existing statutes and existing court decisions as to the meaning of the word ‘abortion,’ ” he said.

The proposed version of the regulation, leaked in July to The New York Times, defined abortion as “any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

That definition, opponents argued, could be construed to include many common forms of birth control.

In public statements and on his official blog, Leavitt sought to assuage critics that the pending regulation would serve only as a means of protecting medical practitioners’ rights to refuse to perform or assist with procedures they deem morally objectionable. The regulation also protects practitioners’ rights to refuse to refer a patient to an alternate provider.

On Thursday, Leavitt continued to insist that is the sole purpose of the regulation. “People should not be forced to say or do things that they believe to be morally wrong,” Leavitt said, calling this a “fundamental” right protected by the First Amendment. “Freedom of expression and action should not be surrendered upon the issuance of a medical degree,” he said.

Leavitt acknowledged, however, that this regulation would not quell disagreements over what constitutes an abortion.

Those questions were deliberately left out of the new regulation’s scope, Leavitt indicated. “Does that mean there’s someone who may feel as if they want to press the definition on one side or the other? That’s been going on for years,” he said.

Leavitt sought the regulation in response to new guidelines adopted by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that, he argued, would force doctors to participate in abortions or risk losing their professional certification.