In April, RFI’s Ismail Royer and Research Fellow Andrew Kubick met with officials of the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to share RFI’s insight into the landscape of medical conscience rights for Christians, Muslims, and other Americans of faith.

The stakeholder listening session included OCR Director Paula M. Stannard, as well as the office’s director, deputy director, and chief of staff, among other officials.

“We’re grateful to HHS for reaching out to faith community representatives and religious liberty advocates,” said RFI President David Trimble on the meeting. “This demonstrates the Administration’s commitment to safeguarding the conscience rights of all Americans in the critical domain of health care,” he added. 

At the outset of the meeting, Royer introduced OCR staff to RFI’s Medical Conscience Rights Initiative (MCRI), a joint effort launched in 2020 along with Alliance Defending Freedom and Christ Medicus Foundation to educate state leaders as to why protecting religious medical practitioners and institutions is so vital.

Royer also discussed the common ethical dilemmas that observant Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the medical field frequently encounter in their profession, and some of the hurdles they face in exercising their medical conscience rights. He referenced his recent testimony before the White House Religious Liberty Commission on religious freedom in healthcare and how the redefinition of human dignity as enabling maximal autonomy poses challenges for morally orthodox medical practitioners.

For example, Royer explained, physicians of all faiths struggle with the increasing pressure to expand the definition of death to include patients with higher brain functions, as a way of increasing the supply of organs for donation. Royer also related the story of a Muslim endocrinologist who was told he’d be sued for discrimination if he refused to supply a patient seeking “gender transition” with cross-sex hormones.

Andrew Kubick, who also serves as an Ethics Consultant at the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC), shared with OCR officials that Catholic pharmacists are routinely forced to violate their religious conscience by filling prescriptions they find objectionable. Royer added that he had heard the same thing from pharmacists in the Muslim community.

RFI’s representatives then recommended specific actions OCR can take to protect medical conscience rights and discussed how RFI and its allies can assist the department in its mission. 

The meeting concluded with participants from RFI and HHS exploring ways they could continue to work together to help protect the conscience rights of religious medical practitioners.