EEOC Opposes New HHS Regulations

The New York Times' Robert Pear, who broke the story on the new HHS provider conscience regulations, wrote yesterday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is "strenuous[ly]" objecting to the new regulations, which would broaden protections for providers who morally oppose to certain health care and would allow them to refuse to provide treatment without referring the patient to a provider who would provide care.  Pear explains the current balance of employer and patient rights in the area of provider conscience:

Under the Civil Rights Act, an employer must make reasonable accommodations for an employee's religious practices, unless the employer can show that doing so would cause "undue hardship on the conduct of its business."

In a letter commenting on the proposed rule, Mr. Ishimaru and Ms. Griffin, from the employment commission, said that 40 years of court decisions had carefully balanced "employees' rights to religious freedom and employers' business needs."

The proposed rule, they said, "would throw this entire body of law into question.

Some Anti-Choice Evangelicals and Catholics Work Toward Abortion Reduction

Writes Jacqueline Salmon in the Washington Post, "Some of the activists [opposed to legal abortion] are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education -- services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies."  The focus of these activists does not seem to be the banning of legal abortion, which causes Joe Scheidler, founder of the Pro-Life Action League, to call the activists "sell-outs."  The coalition backs two House bills, including the Pregnant Women's Support Act, sponsored by Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), and the Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act, sponsored by Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who oppose abortion.

ACLU Seeks Documents Outlining Government Policies On Teens' Access To Reproductive Health Services

The Administration of Children & Families (ACF) has ignored the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act requests for information about its policies concerning refugee and undocumented teenagers' access to health care services, so the ACLU yesterday asked a federal court to order ACF to release the documents.  Said the ACLU in a release,

ACF issued the policy at issue after the media reported in June 2008 that Commonwealth Catholic Charities of Virginia fired four social workers who helped an unaccompanied, undocumented 16-year-old in its custody obtain an abortion and contraception. Commonwealth Catholic Charities receives funding through a federal grant administered for ACF by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The executive director of the Commonwealth of Catholic Charities defended the group's actions by stating in the press that facilitating access to abortion and contraception is "contrary to basic teachings of the Catholic Church.

"The Administration for Children and Families must ensure that taxpayer dollars are used to provide for the needs of some of the most vulnerable children and teens that make it to our shores. They are in need of our compassion and care," said Daniel Mach, Director of Litigation for the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. "Instead, the government appears to be allowing U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and its subcontractors to use federal dollars to impose their religious beliefs on teenagers from a wide range of religious backgrounds who have very few, if any, opportunities to obtain the necessary care on their own." 

Priest Asks Parishioners to Repent for Voting for Obama

Father Jay Scott Newman, a Greenville, South Carolina, priest has asked members of his church who voted for Obama to repent before seeking Communion.