National Organization for Women

September 24, 2008

Michael Leavitt, Secretary
Department of Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W, Room 728E
Washington, DC, 20201
Attention: Brenda Destro
Per E-mail: consciencecomment@hhs.gov

Secretary Leavitt:

The National Organization for Women (NOW) respectfully submits these comments on the proposed rule "Ensuring That Department of Health and Human Services Funds Do Not Support Coercive or Discriminatory Policies or Practices In Violation of Federal Law," also known as the Provider Conscience Regulation. NOW, with over 500,000 members and supporters in every state of this nation, overwhelmingly opposes this proposed rule.

The Department of Health and Human Services' proposed rule is just another in a long succession of statutory and legal constraints that this administration has imposed on women's access to healthcare and reproductive rights.

The reason advanced for the proposed regulation is redundant. Current federal conscience clauses already protect medical professionals who refuse to provide treatment and services based on their religious objections. The proposed regulation is vague. It omits any definition of abortion entirely, thereby inviting providers to use personal interpretation and political views (including the view that birth control and contraceptives are the same as abortion) when determining women's access to medical care, family planning and contraceptives. The proposed regulation is hostile. It has no regard for women's autonomous ability to make fundamental decisions about their healthcare and family formation and allows the views of health care providers to trump the religious, moral and ethical decisions that their female clients and patients have made.

The proposed regulation is harmful. It undermines health care workers' ability to offer the very services for which they are funded and it will discourage doctors and health care clinics from providing the full range of legal, medically-necessary reproductive health services for fear of losing federal funds.

NOW asks that the Department of Health and Human Services uphold a standard of care that gives patients, without exception, access to the full range of medical services and information they require or request. Please do not issue a final regulation on this proposed rule.

Sincerely,

Kim Gandy, President of NOW