Former Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards has attacked the Trump Administration’s push for freedom of conscience among health care workers, saying it is “shameful” for doctors to opt out of performing abortions “because of religious, moral, or personal objections.”
Promising “legal challenges” to federal support for freedom of conscience and religion, Ms. Richards blasted the new direction at the Department of Health and Human Services in a fundraising email letter to abortion supporters.
In her appeal titled “Discrimination, plain and simple. Fight back now,” Richards describes the launch of a new “Conscience and Religious Freedom Division” within HHS as legalized discrimination that “will do nothing but hurt patients.”
President Trump’s latest move is “truly shameful,” Richards wrote, “a proposed rule released by HHS seeks to encourage health care workers to discriminate against patients by refusing to provide care because of religious, moral, or personal objections.”