14. Department of Health and Human Services · Notable
Restore conscience protections for providers in federal health programs
Printed page 464 14. Department of Health and Human Services
“Finally, HHS needs to restore and enhance conscience protection regulations that allow medical practitioners to participate in federal health care programs without being compelled to provide sex changes or similar services.”
What has happened
- Attempted
The 2026 Unified Agenda carries HHS OCR RIN 0945-AA24, "Making Technical Changes and Clarifying How OCR Addresses Conscience Authorities in Health Care; Delegation of Authority", at proposed-rule stage with an NPRM scheduled for July 2026; the entry's cost analysis is benchmarked against the 2019 and 2024 conscience rules, i.e. it is the replacement for both. No NPRM had been published as of 2026-08-28. The 2019 "Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care" rule remains vacated and unreplaced.
- Attempted
HHS OCR rescinded the September 2021 "Guidance on Nondiscrimination Protections under the Church Amendments", the Biden-era reading that treated the conscience statute as protecting participation in abortion and that leaned on the 2022 EMTALA abortion guidance (itself rescinded 2025-05-29). Removing the contrary guidance clears the ground; it does not restore a conscience regulation.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Queries: Federal Register API “Statutory Conscience Rights” (1 hit, the Unified Agenda), “Church Amendments” (7), and “conscience” restricted to the Department of Health and Human Services (20). The Unified Agenda entry was read in full at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-08-14/html/2026-16603.htm.
- Adjacent but not this ask: the FY 2027 IPPS/LTCH final rule (FR 2026-15833, 2026-08-04) extends a religion-inclusive non-discrimination requirement to approved medical residency and nursing/allied health programs, and commenters asked CMS to make abortion training opt-in; CMS declined to go that far. That rule protects trainees from religious discrimination, not practitioners in federal health programs from being compelled to provide services.
- #1312 owns EO 14168 and the OCR gender-identity rescissions; #1395 owns the Section 1557/504 rulemaking. This item owns the conscience-regulation trail only.
- Action
- restore
- Object
- conscience protection regulations for medical practitioners
- ID
- 1259