Trump administration puts religious freedom at heart of US health policy

Abortion rights supporters stage a counter protest during the 50th annual March for Life rally on the National Mall on 20 January 2023 in Washington DC. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Abortion rights supporters stage a counter protest during the 50th annual March for Life rally on the National Mall on 20 January 2023 in Washington DC. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Trump administration puts religious freedom at heart of US health policy Critics say the new focus could reshape LGBTQ+ healthcare, abortion access and vaccine policy The Trump administration is moving religious freedom to the forefront of its health policies, a move that will likely affect reproductive health, LGBTQ+ healthcare, and vaccine policy. “They are very much putting religious freedom front and center,” said Dorit Reiss, a professor at UC Law San Francisco. But “it tends to privilege a conservative form of Christianity and, for example, protect discrimination against LGBTQ people.” The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Sunday it had reorganized its office for civil rights, bringing conscience and religious freedom to the top. And on Friday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a new report on religious liberty that includes multiple references to abortion, vaccines, and gender-affirming care. The reorganized HHS office will require federal agencies, state and local governments, healthcare providers, health plans and others to focus on “protecting the free exercise of religion and conscience and the right to be free from coercion in HHS-conducted or funded programs”, according to the public notice. “This suggests they will use their funding authority to pressure states and local government and private groups,” Reiss said. Liz Sepper, a professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin, noted “this is, of course, being framed in terms of religious liberty, but it’s not really about that.” Most of the religious conscience statutes the office says it is planning to enforce are laws about refusing reproductive healthcare to patients and to beneficiaries of insurance, she said. “I think it’s a really clear signal to the right to life movement that some of their priorities are going to be coming to the top at the agency,” Sepper continued. The most common violation of the church amendment, one of the laws mentioned in the HHS reorganization, is discrimination against abortion providers, Sepper said. “I would guarantee that we will not see the Trump administration’s HHS go to work to stop that kind of discrimination.” Statutes allowing hospitals and individual health providers to refuse certain kinds of healthcare could also be interpreted broadly to healthcare that has been politicized, like vaccines or gender-affirming care, Sepper said. The DOJ report took aim at vaccine mandates, quoting anti-vaccine activists and parents who do not want their children vaccinated. “These are not traditional things for