Monday, May 06, 2019


HHS Issues Rule to Protect 'Conscience' Rights of Health Care Workers

On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its final conscience regulation to protect health care entities and workers who, for moral or religious reasons, object to abortion, sterilization, assisted suicide, and related services and products. 

The rule fulfills a pledge by President Trump "to promote and protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious liberty, a promise he made when he signed an executive order in May 2017 protecting religious liberty," said the HHS in a statement.

"[T]oday we finalized new protections of conscience rights for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students and faith-based charities," said President Trump at the White House. "They’ve been wanting to do that for a long time."

As explained by the HHS, this final rule replaces a rule from 2011 that did not adequately protect health care workers at HHS-fund facilities or programs from discrimination. The rule seeks to ensure that all of the conscience protections already passed by Congress over the years are fully implemented for people working in HHS-funded care facilities.

"These federal laws protect providers, individuals, and other health care entities from having to provide, participate in, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for, services such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide," said the HHS.  "It also includes conscience protections with respect to advance directives," such as assisted suicide.

Roger Severino, the HHS Office of Civil Rights director, said, "Finally, laws prohibiting government-funded discrimination against conscience and religious freedom will be enforced like every other civil rights law. This rule ensures that healthcare entities and professionals won’t be bullied out of the health care field because they decline to participate in actions that violate their conscience, including the taking of human life."

"Protecting conscience and religious freedom not only fosters greater diversity in healthcare, it’s the law,” said Severino.

Maureen Ferguson, a senior policy advisor for The Catholic Association, said, “The Constitution and numerous federal laws provide robust protections for the conscience rights of medical professionals, yet these laws are being violated as doctors, nurses, and medical students are being compelled to participate in abortion and other procedures. "

"Non-discrimination laws such as these are foundational rights in a free society, and we are grateful to [HHS] Secretary Azar for issuing these new regulations to ensure the protection of basic conscience rights and freedom of religion," said Ferguson.

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, said. “Those who serve our nation’s sick in the health care industry, or who are training to do so, should not be forced to violate their conscience in the process. The new Health and Human Services rule will ensure that the rights of medical professionals, guaranteed by the United States Constitution as well as federal law, will be respected."

"No one should be forced to participate in life-ending procedures like abortion or similar activities that go against their religious beliefs or moral convictions," she said.

Critics of the rule said it would prevent women from getting complete care.

Louise Melling, deputy legal director for the ACLU, told the New York Times, “Religious liberty is a fundamental right, but it doesn’t include the right to discriminate or harm others. This rule threatens to prevent people from accessing critical medical care and may endanger people’s lives. … Medical standards, not religious belief, should guide medical care.”

David Stacy with the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, said, “The Trump-Pence administration’s latest attack threatens LGBTQ people by permitting medical providers to deny critical care based on personal beliefs. The administration’s decision puts LGBTQ people at greater risk of being denied necessary and appropriate health care solely based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Everyone deserves access to medically necessary care and should never be turned away because of who they are or who they love.”

HRC said the conscience protection rule would "sanction discrimination" because health care workers would be allowed to follow their religious beliefs.

“The Trump-Pence Administration will stop at nothing to strip patients of the care they deserve," said the National Women's Law Center in a statement. "This rule allows anyone from a doctor to a receptionist to entities like hospitals and pharmacies to deny a patient critical – and sometimes lifesaving – care. Personal beliefs should never determine the care a patient receives. This is a vicious and underhanded attack on the health and lives of patients, particularly targeting women and LGBTQ individuals."

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Trump Condemns ‘Evil and Hate-Filled Attacks’ on Religious Communities in U.S., Worldwide

President Donald Trump used his speech at the National Day of Prayer service at the White House on Thursday to condemn attacks on people of faith domestically and worldwide.

“As we unite on this day of prayer, we renew our resolve to protect communities of faith and to ensure that all people and all of our people can live and pray and worship in peace. In recent months, it’s been pretty tough. We’ve seen evil and hate-filled attacks on religious communities in the United States and all around the world,” he said during the Rose Garden ceremony.

“One month ago, three historically black churches were burned tragically in Louisiana. In Sri Lanka and New Zealand, hundreds of Christians and Muslims were brutally murdered at their places of worship. In October, an anti-Semitic killer attacked the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. That was a horrible event. The first lady and I went to see. That was not even believable,” Trump said.

“And last week, a gunman opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, while Jewish families celebrated the last day of Passover. We mourn for the loss of one extraordinary member of that congregation – Lori Gilbert Kaye – who stood in front of the shooter and gave her life to protect her rabbi – an incredible man, an incredible person,” he added.

The president began his speech by sending prayers to “the people of Venezuela in their righteous struggle for freedom.”

“The brutal repression of the Venezuela people must end, and it must end soon. People are starving. They have no food. They have no water, and this was once one of the wealthiest countries in the world. So we wish them well. We’ll be there to help, and we are there to help,” he said.

The president said people are saying “God” and “Merry Christmas” more often now.

“People are so proud to use the word God, and they’re using the word God again, and they’re not hiding from it, and they’re not being told to take it down, and they’re not saying we can’t honor God. In God we trust – so important,” he said.

Trump said during his first campaign, people were “not allowed” or in some cases, were “ashamed” to use the phrase “Merry Christmas” in stores.

“They’d say, Happy Holidays. They’d have red walls, and you never see Christmas,” he said. “Take a look at your stores nowadays. It’s all ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”

Trump said he’s most proud of repealing the Johnson Amendment, a provision in the U.S. tax code that prohibits non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates.

“And one of the things I’m most proud of is the Johnson Amendment. You can now speak your mind and speak it freely. I said I was going to do that. I told Paula White, who I want to thank so much for everything she’s done,” the president said.

“That was one of the things I said. They took away your voice politically, and these are the people I want to listen to politically, but you weren’t allowed to speak. They would lose their tax-exempt status. That’s not happening anymore, so we got rid of the Johnson Amendment. That’s a big thing,” he said.

As CNSNews.com previously reported, in May 2017, Trump signed the Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty, which ordered the Treasury Department not to enforce the Johnson Amendment.

The executive order calls on the Treasury Department not to “take any adverse action against any individual, house of worship, or other religious organization on the basis that such individual or organization speaks or has spoken about moral or political issues from a religious perspective, where speech of similar character has, consistent with law, not ordinarily been treated as participation or intervention in a political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) a candidate for public office by the Department of the Treasury."

The executive order did not repeal the amendment itself, and congressional efforts to repeal it have so far failed. However, Republican lawmakers re-introduced a bill in February to do just that.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Reps. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) re-introduced legislation in February to repeal the Johnson Amendment’s censorship of non-profit employees, including religious leaders, and restore their First Amendment rights.

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Rise of Anti-Semitism Is Being Fueled by Lies

A 19-year-old man on Saturday opened fire in a synagogue filled with hundreds of Jews celebrating the final hours of Passover.

His hate-fueled act ended the life of Lori Gilbert Kaye—a woman dearly loved by her family and community. The bullets severed the finger of Rabbi Goldstein and wounded several others. The trauma, anguish, and terror will haunt the survivors.

The manifesto inked by the killer reveals the perverted ideologies that inspired his depraved actions. Jarringly, some of these anti-Semitic ideas can be found throughout our society. The problem is pure falsehood and lies about the Jewish people.   

Leading up to World War II, Adolf Hitler whipped up fury against the Jewish people by accusing them of treachery and blaming Jewish influence for societal decay and economic problems. This, of course, led to the Holocaust.

These same sentiments fester today, and the manifesto drafted by the monster responsible for the killing this past weekend echoes the anti-Semitism grounded in religious bigotry of ages past, along with the baseless accusations that were so common.

Symptomatic of the resurgence of anti-Semitism was The New York Times cartoon by Portuguese cartoonist António Moreira Antunes, published on Thursday of last week. The cartoon pictures Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog on a leash leading a blind President Donald Trump. In addition, a Star of David dangles from the dog’s neck while a kippah (signifying the “fear of heaven” in Judaism) rests on Trump’s head.

The apology for this blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon hardly seemed credible, given another cartoon by a Norwegian artist that the Times published days later. This one depicted the prime minister coming down Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments using a selfie stick.

Roar Hagen, a Norwegian cartoonist, released a nearly identical cartoon of Netanyahu leading Trump—each carrying one tablet of the Ten Commandments—in a journey down from the Golan Heights. The United States recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights just weeks ago.

These are no mere critiques of the Israeli government, the Israeli prime minister, or the president of the United States. These cartoons depict Jews as a sly minority manipulating the world in a quest for domination.

How is this different in substance to the Nazi Germany periodical Lustige Blätter in 1940 picturing “the Jew” leading British Prime Minister Winston Churchill by the hand atop the globe? “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” published in 1903, once spread these myths. A mainstream media outlet now chooses to normalize these ideas for mass consumption.

Make no mistake: The “anti-Zionism” of the 21st century is but a manifestation of anti-Semitism. It singles out the 15 million Jewish people alive today (just 0.2% of the world’s population) and denies them the right to a nation in their ancestral homeland, while accusing “the Jew” of “hypnotizing” the world.

Sadly, our nation’s institutions are failing to sufficiently counter this hate. Congress has struggled to condemn with specificity the blatant anti-Semitic statements from freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who claimed Israel “hypnotized the world” and suggested Jewish Americans unduly influence politicians through their wealth.

Leaders of the Women’s March and other organizations embrace those with a history of anti-Semitic rhetoric—people such as Louis Farrakhan, who says the “powerful Jews are my enemy” and that he “has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through.”

Americans are growing disturbingly ignorant of recent atrocities against the Jewish people. In a recent poll, two-thirds of millennials were unfamiliar with the Auschwitz concentration camps where Nazis exterminated more than 1 million Jews, out of the more than 6 million who perished in the Holocaust. Moreover, college campuses provide a safe quarter for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement—a movement rooted in anti-Semitism.

The answer to such hate in a free society is not to muzzle speech—even hate speech. For the power to suppress speech, once obtained, may ultimately be wielded against those who hold viewpoints the state disapproves of.

Nor is the solution to deny law-abiding citizens their fundamental human right of self-defense, a road demonstrably proven over the centuries to heighten the risk of tyranny, plunder, or mayhem.

No. The solution is far more complex, one which requires action on the part of all us.

People of goodwill must boldly condemn those promoting this hate. Parents must better equip the next generation with a grounding in history in order to inoculate youth from philosophical poison that seeks to corrupt their minds and destroy their hearts. Educators must dispel the myths. Political parties must deny those engaged in the traffic of anti-Semitic tropes a place in leadership, and donors must withhold funds from those politicians.

Each of us bears a unique responsibility to combat hateful lies with truth. Only light dispels the darkness.

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Australia: Homosexual footballer reproves Christian footballer

The first Australian NRL player to publicly come out as gay has issued an emotional message to Israel Folau as the Wallabies star fights to save his rugby career.

Speaking on Channel 9’s Sports Sunday program, ex-footy star Ian Roberts delivered a sobering message to Folau about the tragic truth of the beliefs he’s spreading.

“I feel sorry for Israel but there are consequences to your actions,” Roberts said. “I don’t say this lightly and what I’m about to say, the language I use, is hard and it’s for a point, it’s to get that message across.

“There are literally kids in the suburbs killing themselves and I say that with the greatest sense of respect and I’m not saying that Israel is responsible solely for that.

“But it’s these types of comments and these types of off-the-cuff remarks when you have young people and vulnerable people who are dealing with their sexuality, confused, not knowing how to deal with it.

There's no mystery about knowing how to deal with it.   Homosexual males usually get on well with women.  From a Biblical viewpoint they should put in the effort to create a normal relationship with one.  If they really want anal sex, there is a   small minority of women who like it.  I don't like doing it but I have had two different women request it

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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