FAQ: What is the “conscience regulation”?
What is the "conscience regulation"?
The regulation simply implements three civil rights laws passed by Congress over the past 35 years defending the conscience rights of health care workers to make ethical decisions on controversial issues.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized the conscience regulation on December 19, 2008.
The laws forbid discrimination against healthcare professionals who exercise their conscientious rights related to participation in certain controversial medical procedures--most notably, but not limited to, abortion and sterilization. The regulation applies to recipients of American tax dollars through certain HHS funding.
The HHS regulation notes that the intent of the regulation is to educate, raise awareness of, and provide for the enforcement of three existing laws protecting the conscience rights of health care workers and students: the Church Amendments (enacted at various times in the 1970s), section 245 of the Public Health Service Act (1996), and the Hyde-Weldon Amendment (first enacted in 2004 and then in every subsequent year).
