Battle over Bush’s proposed HHS midnight regulation

Yesterday, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced legislation (The Protecting Patients and Health Care Act ) that would block the Bush administration’s intended midnight regulations to protect health care providers from discrimination for refusing to provide reproductive and other care on the basis of religious or moral grounds.  Bush’s proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal funds from discriminating against such health care workers and requiring their employees to assist in the provision of certain health service programs that they object to because of their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

Senator Clinton describes the “ill-conceived” midnight regulation as “a serious threat to patients’ access to information and care” and warns of the “slippery slope” that such a rule would create, endangering patients’ access to contraception and other vital care or information.

For more, see the New York Times coverage of the Bush legislation and Senator Clinton’s guest post at RH Reality Check.

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