Last week, news of a potential government shutdown kept the Internet’s metaphorical ear to the ground—a “Will they or won’t they?” question for 2018’s rather trying political times. But amid all the hubbub that overtook much of the news cycle during the latter part of the week, something flew under the radar when it might not have otherwise: a major change in the Department of Health and Human Services that could have a huge impact on women and those who identify as LGBTQ+.
On Thursday, the HHS Department announced that they were adding a unit called the “Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom,” which, yes, does sound like something out of a dystopian paperback. It’s essentially the Trump administration’s way of protecting health care workers who, because of their religious or moral beliefs, would prefer not to treat certain patients.
The division was created by Roger Severino, who is the director for the HHS’s Office for Civil Rights and a former expert in “religious liberty, marriage, and life issues” at the conservative Heritage Foundation. This has been his thing for a while: consider 2016, when he coauthored an article for the foundation that undermines the concept of gender identity and literally contains a sentence that implies identifying as transgender is a mental health issue (“They effectively require controversial procedures, such as ‘sex-reassignment’ surgery, that respected medical professionals argue have not been proven to be effective in treating serious mental health conditions.”)
His remarks on the Department of Conscience and Religious Freedom’s unveiling present something of a 1984 “War is peace” paradox: “Never forget that religious freedom is a primary freedom, that it is a civil right that deserves enforcement and respect,” he said during a ceremony to announce the new division. Unfortunately, the U.S. seems to be the only developed nation still yet to agree on whether access to health care is a civil right as well.
Much like many of the Trump administration’s policies, the division’s creation rolls back an Obama administration policy stipulating that health care workers were required to treat all patients, even those with whom they disagreed on moral or religious grounds. Prior to installing this division of the HHS, says acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan: “[The government] hounded religious hospitals and the men and women who staff them, forcing them to provide and refer for services that violate their consciences.”
Two of the most likely examples of these possible patients would be women needing or wanting an abortion and transgender people.
“This administration has taken a very expansive view of religious liberty,” Louis Melling, the deputy legal director of the ACLU said. “It understands religious liberty to override anti-discrimination principles.”
She gave examples to NPR of cases of care refusal, including a fertilization specialist who didn’t want to help a lesbian couple, a nurse who wouldn’t provide care to a woman who’d just had an abortion, and a pediatrician who wouldn’t examine the child of two lesbians.
However, according to NPR, the Division of Conscience and Religious Freedom seems “primarily aimed” at abortion: It found that the division mentioned a seven-year-old federal regulation “guiding the enforcement conscience protections” more than 30 times.
On the department’s homepage under a heading titled “Civil Rights,” government text reads, “HHS ensures that people have equal access and opportunities to participate in certain health care and human services programs without unlawful discrimination.” Melling added that, of course, under federal law, gender discrimination is banned. However, it’s not clear whether Trump’s administration—not exactly the wokest—”includes gender identity and sexual orientation in the definition of gender,” according to NPR.
One thing’s for sure, though. Severino certainly doesn’t, according to that 2016 co-authored article: “Gender identity and sexual orientation, unlike race or sex, are changeable, self-reported, and entirely self-defined characteristics. Government should not grant special privileges on such bases when legal recognition of a group as a ‘protected class’ is, with few exceptions, reserved for groups with objectively identifiable immutable characteristics.”
And welcome to 2018. Or 1918.
Related Stories:
–The Trump Administration Just Quietly Cut $214 Million From Teen Birth Control Programs
–A Female Judge Just Blocked Trump’s Attempt to Rescind the Birth Control Mandate
–Trump Reportedly Banned the Words ‘Transgender’ and ‘Diversity’ in CDC Documents
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