Obama the Moderate??? (Part 2)

In August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) weighed in with a proposed regulation to extend and solidify existing legal conscience protections for healthcare providers who are opposed to abortion. On the surface, the HHS efforts would seem innocent enough, as it largely clarifies how existing conscience-protection laws will be implemented. But the abortion industry was very threatened by this proposed regulation. Their fear is that a clear statement on conscience would enable the majority of practitioners to divorce themselves entirely from the abortion culture. For this reason, abortion’s defenders came out swinging. In September, twenty-seven Democratic U.S. senators and one independent sent a letter to HHS secretary Mike Leavitt that claimed the regulation would damage “the healthcare needs of women.” (Incidentally, senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden were among the signatories.)