Protect the Conscience Rights of Pro-Life Health Care Providers!

Now is the time to urge Congress to protect the right of conscientious objection to abortion. Please urge your elected representatives to support the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (ANDA). This proposal is part of the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (HR 940), and is now included in the House’s Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2016 (HR 3020, secs. 530 (d) and (e)). Ask members to include this language in final must-pass funding legislation this year. Please take action today through this link.

The need for this legislation has grown more urgent since last year, when the state of California started forcing almost all health plans in the state to pay for elective abortions, even late-term abortions. There is no exemption for religious or moral objections. A mandate for hospitals, even religious hospitals, to perform abortions could be next.

California’s coercive policy clearly violates a federal law known as the Weldon amendment, which forbids governments receiving federal health care funds to discriminate against those who decline to take part in abortion. Unfortunately, this and other existing laws have loopholes and legal weaknesses that make them ineffective against such challenges. For example, nurses threatened with loss of their jobs unless they assist in abortions have found they have no right to go to court to see the law enforced. Congress should reaffirm a principle that has long enjoyed broad bipartisan support: Government should not force hospitals, doctors, nurses and other providers to stop offering much-needed health care because they cannot in conscience participate in destroying a developing human life.