For the first time in decades, House Democrats passed a federal budget bill without several common-sense Pro-Life measures that have enjoyed bipartisan support for decades. Most publicized among these is the Hyde Amendment, which protects taxpayers from funding abortion. However, another crucial Pro-Life amendment that was stripped was the Weldon Amendment, which protects health care professionals from being forced to commit abortions. Texas must strengthen our state-level conscience protections for our health care workers.
After Roe v. Wade in 1973, conscience protection provisions began to be included in federal appropriations bills to ensure that professionals and taxpayers were not forced to provide or subsidize a practice with which they morally and fundamentally disagreed. The Weldon Amendment, first added to a federal Health and Human Services appropriations bill in 2005, has been reapplied to every subsequent HHS appropriations bill.
The Weldon Amendment protects health care professionals and health care entities from discrimination by a governmental agency because they will not participate in, refer for, or provide coverage for an abortion. “Health care entity” is defined to include individual health care professionals as well as hospitals, health insurance plans, or broadly any other health care facilities, plans, or organizations. However, even when this amendment was in place under the Obama Administration, these provisions were never enforced.
Now, the Democrat-controlled Congress has moved beyond ignoring to working to repeal the Weldon Amendment outright from the recently-passed budget. Thanks to an amendment by Senator James Lankford (R-OK), the Senate has reinstated the Hyde and Weldon Amendments into the federal budget bill. But this by no means guarantees the amendments will stay in the final version. This back and forth highlights the vulnerability of these Pro-Life amendments and underscores why Texas must take action to protect the consciences of our health care professionals at the state level. There were already limitations on federal conscience protections even with the Weldon Amendment in place: protections narrowly applied only to abortion, yet neglected numerous other health care services that may violate a health care professional’s conscience, did not include protections from adverse and discriminatory administrative or civil action, and could easily be ignored by antagonistic presidential administrations. Now, what was anticipated has become a reality, with the Biden Administration and Democrat-led Congress fighting to repeal basic protections of conscience regarding abortion.
Current Texas state law only includes limited conscience protections for medical professionals. With the potential repeal of the Weldon Amendment at the federal level, and Governor Abbott calling at least two more special legislative sessions, the Texas Legislature now has a unique opportunity to enact broader conscience protections for all medical professionals—to cover all health care services and to expand the objectionable actions against which Texas professionals are protected from performing. However, for the Legislature to act, Governor Abbott must include strengthening conscience protections for health care professionals on his special session call. Urge Governor Abbott to add this vital Pro-Life priority on the next special session agenda! Where Washington, D.C. fails, Texas must lead in protecting our health care professionals from having to choose between adhering to a moral conviction or fleeing their profession and patients.