Trump/Pence to Grant Health Care Workers License to Discriminate

As previous posts have stressed, the one group to whom Der Trumpenführer has kept his promises are the Christofascists and evangelical Christians to whom he owes his occupancy of the White House.  Key among those promises is the right to discriminate against others under the guise of "religious belief."  The attacks on the LGBT community have been unrelenting and now Politico looks at the disturbing plan to allow Christofascists to refuse health care services to those they dislike, something that has been a wet dream for evangelical leaders for years.  The effort puts one religious group above above all others and makes a mockery of the right to religious freedom for all citizens, no solely hypocrisy-filled, ignorance embracing bigots who wrap themselves in the cloak of religion.  No doubt some will say to themselves "I'm not gay" or "I haven't had an abortion" but for the Christofascists this is just the beginning of their agenda to have a de facto established religion in America.  Contraception rights could be next.  Here are highlights from Politico:

The Trump administration is poised to overhaul the HHS civil rights office as part of a broader plan to protect health workers who don't want to perform abortions, treat transgender patients seeking to transition or provide other services for which they have religious or moral objections.

Under a proposed rule — which has been closely guarded at HHS and is now under review by the White House — the civil rights office would be empowered to further shield these workers and punish organizations that don’t allow them to express their religious and moral objections, according to sources on and off the Hill. That would be a significant shift for the office, which currently focuses on enforcing federal civil rights and health care privacy laws.

That's alarmed advocates for LGBT patients, who say they're already fighting to overcome stigmas and discrimination and who warn that the policy shift will only worsen their situation.

"This is the use of religion to hurt people because you disapprove of who they are," said Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality. "Any rule that grants a license to discriminate would be a disgrace and a mockery of the principal of religious freedom we all cherish."

The pending rule, which could be released as soon as this week, has been described to POLITICO as establishing a new division of the HHS civil rights office that would conduct compliance reviews, audits and other enforcement actions to ensure that health care providers are allowing workers to opt out of procedures when they have religious or moral objections. The new division would be a third, co-equal branch with the office's existing two divisions that focus on federal civil rights laws and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Patient groups and legal organizations vowed to challenge HHS if providers are allowed to deny care based on criteria like a patient's gender or gender expression. "Should the administration choose to move forward to implement a discriminatory policy, we will see them in court," Louise Melling, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

The new rules — a priority for anti-abortion groups and supporters — could come just days before Friday’s March for Life, the annual gathering in Washington marking the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision. Republicans have typically timed votes on anti-abortion legislation to the event, the nation’s largest anti-abortion rally.