| NEW YORK - The Department of Health and Human Services today (Feb. 18, 2011) modified a regulation originally issued by the Bush administration that was designed to allow insurance companies, hospitals and other health care providers to refuse to offer basic reproductive health services, including birth control and life-saving abortions. The American Civil Liberties Union welcomed the changes, while urging the administration and lawmakers to oppose ongoing efforts in the House of Representatives to place politics over women's health.
"We are pleased the Obama administration eliminated the most egregious portions of the rule that endangered women's access to emergency care and reproductive health services," said Jennifer Dalven, Director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. "The administration must now stand firm and prevent the passage of other extreme measures. A patient's health and safety must be a health care provider's first priority."
The Republican majority House of Representatives is currently considering several new measures such as a bill that basically would allow hospitals to abandon a pregnant woman in need of an emergency abortion, a proposal to eliminate funding for the Title X Family Planning Program and legislation that would take away insurance coverage for abortion from the millions of women who currently have it.
Today's modification does not alter long-standing federal laws which allow health care providers to deny patients certain health care services based on their personal beliefs. Go Back |
