Key Health Agency Protects Conscience Rights, Combats Anti-Christian Bias

The federal agency devoted to health care has reorganized its civil rights office to restore key conscience protections and reverse the alleged anti-Christian bias under former President Joe Biden.

“Faith-filled Americans should not be forced to choose between their profession and their conscience, and faith-based organizations should be able to operate on the same level as secular institutions,” a senior official at the Department of Health and Human Services told reporters in a press briefing on Thursday.

The department, which accounts for roughly a quarter of federal spending and manages programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, reorganized its Office for Civil Rights earlier this month. The office now consists of three divisions: the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division; the Civil Rights Division; and the Health Information, Privacy, Data, and Cybersecurity Division.

The conscience division protects health professionals and religious organizations who morally oppose practices such as abortion and controversial experimental transgender medical procedures. While the agency first established the conscience division under President Donald Trump’s first term, the Biden administration dissolved that division in 2023.

Conscience Division Founder Weighs In

Roger Severino, vice president of economic and domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, founded the conscience division in Trump’s first term.

“Biden tried his best to erase President Trump’s legacy on conscience rights but the relaunch of the division means they are fully back in business,” Severino told the Daily Signal in a statement Thursday.

He emphasized that the conscience division’s last major action in Trump’s first term involved revoking $200 million in Medicaid funding from California after the Golden State required an order of nuns to provide abortion coverage. He urged the newly reestablished division to reinstate that ruling.

“After enduring four years of Biden and [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom hounding and persecuting nuns for standing for life in the womb, there is a backlog of victims that once again have a place to turn to have their rights vindicated,” Severino said.

“When it comes to abortion, assisted suicide, or sterilizing gender-confused kids, no doctor or nurse should have to choose between a career and moral convictions against doing harm,” he added.

Anti-Christian Bias

The senior HHS official emphasized a few policy moves mentioned in the Justice Department report on anti-Christian bias in the Biden administration.

Under Biden, the HHS Office for Civil Rights dropped an enforcement effort against the University of Vermont Medical Center, which had allegedly forced a nurse to assist in an abortion despite her religious objections. HHS Regulators had also demanded a Catholic hospital snuff out a chapel candle or lose its ability to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.

The department also ran an employee survey, finding that staff reported hostile or derogatory comments mocking Christian beliefs as silly, unenlightened, or not compatible with a pro-science mentality, the HHS official told reporters.

The senior HHS official lamented that “people of faith often feel intimidated from entering the medical profession or remaining in it.”

Under Biden, the Office for Civil Rights reinterpreted civil rights laws, claiming that statutes forbidding discrimination on the basis of sex applied to sexual orientation and gender identity, effectively requiring transgender ideology in the medical industry. HHS under Trump has reversed these policies, rescinding guidance supporting “gender-affirming care,” and publishing a peer-reviewed analysis finding “extremely weak evidence” that experimental transgender medical interventions have any positive effect for minors.

Under Trump, the Office for Civil Rights advised medical providers to avoid the racial discrimination advocated by the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion movement. The office is currently investigating some medical providers for using race as a factor in hiring and promotion.

The office has also discouraged health care providers from denying parents’ access to their minor children’s medical records.