Sample Letter on a Current Issue
Support Health Care Providers' Conscience Protections
Oppose President Obama's Plan to Rescind the Health Care Providers' Conscience Rule
Letter to the Department of Health and Human Services 10
(long letter)

Even after April 9, 2009, it's still not to late to make a difference on this issue.

Please put the below letter in your own words or use it as is, and mail or e-mail your letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (addresses below). This letter is based on the full USCCB comments to HHS.

Also, using the below letter or the other sample letters on this issue and the other resources related to it, please put a letter in your own words (or use a sample letter as is), and mail it to your federal House representative and your two federal senators as well as President Obama. It's much better to send a form letter than not to send a letter at all. Also, let's flood the White House comments line on this issue.

Note: HHS will make available for public viewing all comments and the personal information (e.g., name and address) included in them.

Pro-life comments to the HHS might include the following:

Mail (one original and two copies):
Office of Public Health and Science
Department of Health and Human Services
Attention: Rescission Proposal Comments
Hubert H Humphrey Building
200 Independence Ave SW Room 716G
Washington DC 20201

E-mail:
proposedrescission@hhs.gov
(Attachments to e-mail to HHS should be in Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or Excel. HHS prefers Microsoft Word.)

Phone:
HHS comments line voice mail: 202-205-5445

Tenth Sample Letter to the HHS

[Note: HHS will make available for public viewing all comments and the personal information (e.g., name and address) included in them.]

Jane Doe
12345 Main St
Minneapolis MN 55418-3209

Date

Office of Public Health and Science
Department of Health and Human Services
Attention: Rescission Proposal Comments
Hubert H Humphrey Building
200 Independence Ave SW Room 716G
Washington DC 20201

Dear HHS:

Subject: Please Do Not Rescind the Conscience Rule

Thank you for inviting input from people as you consider whether or not to rescind the health care providers' conscience rule.

Please do not rescind the current rule. It is necessary to protect the right of health care providers to refuse to participate in abortions and other practices that they believe are wrong and do harm.

This letter has four sections:
The Bigger Picture
Why the Conscience Rule Was and Is Necessary
The Rule Does Not Reduce Access to Health Care Services; It Increases It
The Rule is Clear and Should Not Be Rescinded in the Name of a Lack of Clarity
The Rule is Legal and Worth Fighting For -- in the Courts and in the Current Administration

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Before I point out reasons that the conscience rule is essential, I want to emphasize the two opposite ideologies that are driving this issue, the power of ideology, and the importance of standing up for the values that are based on truth. Without this bigger picture, finer points may be quite useless.

In general, doctors, other health care providers, and other citizens who are fighting for the providers' conscience rule are primarily motivated by their recognition that abortion kills an innocent human being and that many forms of contraception are abortifacients. (They may believe that contraception is wrong for other reasons as well.) When they see a pregnant woman, they see two persons. They seek the life and health of both mother and child, and they don't want to kill. They seek to build a national and world-wide culture in which all human life is respected.

In general, those who are fighting against the provider's conscience rule are primarily motivated by their desire that all restrictions on abortion be removed. They have misguided notions of women's equality, liberty, privacy, or health that they think necessitate the right to kill children in the womb. They seek to build a national and world-wide culture that can justify ending one human life for the convenience of another.

The two causes are, by their natures, opposed to one another. Therefore, the Department of Health and Human Services, by many of its regulations, especially it's conscience regulations, helps either one cause or the other and hurts either one cause or the other.

I'm asking you to please face this fight squarely and help build a culture of life -- a culture of true health. Help stop the slaughter that is abortion. Don't participate in the erosion of equal protections for all human beings from fertilization until natural death. It cannot be both wrong to kill a child in the womb and not wrong to kill a child in the womb. One position is correct; the other, incorrect. The correct position would be correct even if few held it. The incorrect position would be incorrect even if few held that it was incorrect. If abortion is the wrongful taking of human life, then abortion is not a medical procedure; it is homicide. If abortion is homicide, then it is not healthy for a woman to have an abortion, any more than it's healthy for a woman to shoot an innocent person. Abortion is the wrongful taking of human life. It is homicide. Completely outlawing abortion would be the healthiest thing for women as well as for babies in the womb. There is never a case where intentional abortion is warranted; it's never the healthful thing to do for child, mother, or anyone involved, because hardship never justifies homicide. (If a pregnant woman needs to have an operation or other procedure to save her life, and if her baby dies as a secondary, unintended result of that procedure, that's not the same thing as intentional abortion.)

Though some citizens' ideology makes them blind to the scientific fact that human life begins at fertilization, that mistaken ideology doesn't change the fact that, when a woman is pregnant, a child is present. Though some citizens' ideology compels them to recognize a fetus, an embryo, or a zygote as a human being, yet as one subject to a mother's right to kill her child, that doesn't make the child less of a person, entitled to all the rights of persons, the most fundamental of which is the right to life.

The Supreme Court rulings that opened the door for abortion on demand are bad, unconstitutional laws, and some day they will be overturned, just as slavery was finally abolished in this country and just as the Nazi Holocaust was finally brought to an end. Abortion is a crime against humanity. This is no time to further expand or reinforce bad law. Nor can there be any legal requirement to do so. Now is the time to implement, enforce, expand, and make good law. The conscience rule reaffirms a basic principle: no health care entity should be forced to perform, participate in, prescribe, or refer for abortions.

WHY THE CONSCIENCE RULE WAS AND IS NECESSARY

Unless health care providers are free to refuse to provide or refer for any procedures and drugs that they deem wrong, they cannot fulfill their intention to "first do no harm." If health care providers cannot choose to "first do no harm," harm to people will increase.

The conscience rule was proposed and put into place because of difficulties in implementing existing conscience laws. If you remove the rule, you restore the former problems. Before the conscience rule, there was a notable pattern of grant recipient unawareness or flouting of existing laws protecting conscience; namely, the Church Amendments, the Public Health Service Act, and the Weldon Amendment. For example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists considered requiring doctors to do abortions or refer women to abortion practitioners. You established the rule to require recipients to certify compliance with the longstanding conscience laws in order to receive funds. And in order to effectively deal with discrimination in the work place, your rule gave health care providers recourse to the HHS Office of Civil Rights and a way to press charges in the event that they experience discrimination. These are good and necessary regulations.

If health care entities that receive federal funds are required to participate in or refer for practices that are morally objectionable to them, the following will most likely result:

The question may be raised as to why this administration would go down this path, given the consequences. This brings me back to my main emphasis: the power of ideology and how important it is that our laws be based on moral ideology. Aside from the greed that helps drive the abortion industry, at the core of the push to remove the conscience regulations is the philosophy that the freedom to abort without hinderance or restriction is for the good of this world and all of its citizens. Holders of this philosophy are, in their own way, sincere, well-meaning, and altruistic. They are passionate, just as pro-lifers are passionate. No doubt, in their zeal, many "pro-choice" advocates see most of the above-listed consequences of the rule's rescission as acceptable and even as ultimately furthering the cause of "choice." A complete overhaul of health care, resulting in fewer pro-life institutions and individuals would actually be seen by them as desirable. "Pro-choice" proponents aren't necessarily bad people; but what they want and promote is immoral. Slave owners weren't necessarily bad people, but they were doing something immoral. Everyone who participated in the Nazi Holocaust wasn't necessarily a bad person, but the killing of Jews and others was immoral.

THE RULE DOES NOT REDUCE ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE SERVICES; IT INCREASES IT

In this larger perspective, the claim that the conscience rule reduces access to information and health care services, particularly by low-income women, can be seen as baseless, because the rule protects true medical practice by and for all. If the information and "services" that "pro-choice" claimants refer to are regarding abortion or abortifacients, then what they seek is outside of the realm of health care; what they seek is the opposite of health care.

The rule in no way prohibits health care providers from performing any legal service or procedure.

Whatever information or services might be denied by a given health care provider for reasons of conscience can certainly be obtained easily enough from another practitioner. Whatever extra time or effort is spent or inconvenience experienced by the patient in obtaining service elsewhere isn't worth the weakening of providers' conscience protections. Nor is it worth the loss of a human life in the womb. We have no inalienable right to instant or automatic service from a health care provider on our terms when our terms go against the provider's standard of doing no harm. But every human being has an inalienable right to life, which can be protected only if providers are free not to participate in the taking of innocent life.

THE RULE IS CLEAR AND SHOULD NOT BE RESCINDED IN THE NAME OF A LACK OF CLARITY

For the following reasons, it would be a mistake to rescind the current conscience rule with the purpose of improving or clarifying it:

• It is clear enough to be effective. You carefully crafted the conscience regulations after soliciting public comments and a lengthy period of review. It's because the rule is clear enough to enforce what it was meant to enforce that "pro-choice" activists claim that it is unclear and seek its rescission.

• The conscience rule has no lack of clarity that warrants its rescission -- in its entirety or in part. While all such regulations can appear confusing to people not versed in legal language and form or fully knowledgeable about the laws and other particulars to which the regulations refer, it is most unlikely that any new version from the current administration would appear clearer.

• If the rule is rescinded and not replaced by the current administration, the problems that the rule solved will exist again. There will be less awareness of health care provider conscience protections, more discrimination against health care providers who refuse to participate in activities in violation of their consciences, and less recourse to the HHS in cases of discrimination.

• If the rule is rescinded and replaced by the current administration, given the "pro-choice" agenda of the current administration, health care provider conscience protections will be removed or weakened. However, not a single conscience protection in the rule should be removed or weakened.

• Any clarification that may be needed to further implement existing federal conscience laws can be made with additional HHS regulations and without rescinding the current rule. Given the "pro-choice" agenda of the current administration, it would be much easier to retain current conscience protections by retaining the current rule and making new HHS regulations that further clarify federal conscience law than to rescind the rule and adequately reestablish provider conscience protections after removing them.

THE RULE IS LEGAL AND WORTH FIGHTING FOR -- IN THE COURTS AND IN THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION

Please stand up to the pressures of "pro-choice" activists and their lawyers. Assert that there can be no valid legal requirement to remove protections of the inalienable right to life. The arguments in "pro-choice" lawsuits themselves demonstrate a lack of compliance with conscience laws and the necessity of the rule that they are challenging.

Please stand up to the extreme "pro-choice" agenda of the current administration. In the summary of the your proposal to rescind the conscience rule, you say, "The Department believes it is important to have an opportunity to review this regulation to ensure its consistency with current Administration policy ..." This is to encourage you that you cannot make conscience regulations that are both just and consistent with current administration policy. Please choose justice. See the injustices that others may miss and inspire others to see them, too.

Our country was founded on two principles: 1) human rights come from God; and 2) it is the role of government to enforce those rights. A battle between life and death is going on in our nation. We can end abortion, but we have to be willing to do battle.

Please do not rescind the conscience rule. It promotes health, saves lives, and helps build a better world.

Thank you for your consideration of my comments and requests.

Sincerely,

[Signature]
Jane Doe

Related Pages
Ending Abortion
How You Can Help in Any of a Number of Ways
Sign the Petition to Protect Pro-life Doctors
Contact Your Elected Officials
Sample Letters on Current Issues
Support Health Care Providers' Conscience Protections