‘Dereliction of its duty’

RICHARD A. SOKERKA

The U.S. bishops have issued a strong rebuke to the Biden administration for dropping a conscience rights lawsuit that is a clear violation of religious liberty.

On July 30, the Justice Department quietly moved to dismiss its lawsuit against a Vermont hospital, which had allegedly coerced a nurse into helping with an abortion in 2017. When news of this surfaced, the U.S. bishops’ conference issued a statement that the Justice Department was “acting in dereliction of its duty.”

“It is hard to imagine a more horrific civil rights violation than being forced to take an innocent human life,” said a joint statement by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, chairman of the conference’s religious liberty committee, and Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, chairman of the pro-life committee.

In December 2020, the Justice Depart­ment — during the term of President Trump — sued the University of Vermont Medical Center after a nurse there claimed she was coerced into assisting with an abortion in 2017. The hospital had a “pattern” of discrimination against staffers opposed to abortion, the department added. According to the Justice Department complaint, approximately 10 nurses with stated conscience objections to abortion were forced to participate in approximately 20 abortion procedures at the hospital.

The two archbishops said the hospital’s alleged coercion was “not only deeply wrong, but a violation of federal law.”

The 2020 Justice Department complaint alleged that the hospital violated the Church Amendments, federal policy that establishes conscience protections in health care.

Last week, 84 members of Congress, all Republicans, accused the Biden Administra­tion of committing a “profound miscarriage of justice” in dropping the case.

Congressional Pro-Life Caucus co-chairs Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) joined Sens. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in leading the letter from 84 members to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra. “Your handling of this case is a rejection of your commitment to enforce federal conscience laws for Americans of all religious beliefs and creeds — and especially for doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who object to abortion,” the letter stated to Garland and Becerra.

The Biden administration dropped the case despite the lack of “any binding settlement” with the hospital for its alleged coercion, the members noted in their letter. Sen. Lankford noted his opposition to HHS Secretary Becerra’s appointment because of his hostility towards conscience protections. He cited Becerra’s efforts to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide contraception coverage in employee health plans.

The Religious Freedom Institute (RFI) was joined by many other organizations in supporting the letter issued by the Repub­licans. RFI stands in support of upholding medical conscience protections for all medical practitioners and views these protections as an indispensable aspect of safeguarding religious liberty in the United States.

The archbishops called on the Biden Administration “to stand up for the basic dignity of our nation’s health care workers by reopening this case, and on Congress to pass the Conscience Protection Act so that doctors and nurses can defend their own rights in court.”

Since Day One in office, President Biden has made his top priority strengthening the right to abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy up to and including birth and weakening any restrictions that stand in its way, such as dismissing this lawsuit that is as open and shut a conscience violation as one will ever find.

The Biden Administration and UVMMC must be held accountable for the actions as they brazenly continue to promote a culture of death at all costs, with a total disregard for human life in the womb.