Women have few rights at all when doctors can legally misinform them or deny service entirely.

Under a new midnight regulation crammed through by the Bush Department of Health and Human Services and poised to become law any day now, any health-care worker may refuse to perform procedures, offer advice or dispense prescriptions, if doing so would offend their religious beliefs or moral convictions.

Congress has protected the right of physicians to opt out of providing abortions for decades. This new rule, which President-elect Obama can overturn (although it may take months), is far broader. It allows one's access to birth control, emergency contraception and even artificial insemination to turn on the moral preferences of a pharmacist, nurse or ambulance driver.

Further nutter nonsense appeared in a South Dakota law that went into effect last summer after an appeals court lifted a preliminary injunction. The law requires physicians providing abortions to read from a state-mandated script advising the patient that she is about to terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being with whom she has an existing relationship. The doctor must have her patient sign each page of a form indicating that she has been warned of the statistically significant risks of the procedure, including increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide.

These risks are almost completely unsupported by the scientific literature. A new comprehensive study released by Johns Hopkins found no significant differences in long-term mental health between women in the United States who choose to terminate a pregnancy and those who do not. The disparity between the empirical data and the mandatory script thus forces physicians into a Hobson's choice between providing patients with accurate medical information, and possible license suspension and misdemeanor charges.

Whether we like it or not, the right to birth control, emergency contraception and—under most circumstances—abortion is still constitutionally protected. But these are not services a woman can provide for herself, which leaves her with few rights at all when her doctors are empowered by law to misinform her, withhold advice or deny services altogether.

The controversial new Health and Human Services rule protecting the conscience rights of healthcare workers has some kick to it, namely the loss of government funding and associated legal costs if a provider doesn't honor a workers' right to practice their moral or religious beliefs on the job.

Providers are required under the new regulations to certify in writing that they're complying with federal laws protecting the conscience rights of healthcare workers to refuse to participate in or make referrals to services they find immoral. The rules are so vague that tangential staff such as receptionists and janitors, as well as institutional heads of hospitals, HMOs and insurance companies, are covered.

This last-ditch effort to undermine women's health and privacy is a transparent payoff to the right-wing pressure groups, said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. We look forward to working with the incoming Obama administration to reverse this divisive rule and change the tone of the debate over reproductive rights by protecting women's access to contraception, which actually helps prevent unintended pregnancies.

The 11th hour ruling by the Bush administration (the regulation takes effect on the eve of President-Elect Obama's inauguration) was a surprise and a disappointment to many, but the development was long supported by a core group of Catholics, evangelicals -- and a subgroup of physicians.

The Obama administration plans to reverse a regulation from late in the Bush administration allowing health-care workers to refuse to provide services based on moral objections.

The Provider Refusal Rule was proposed by the Bush White House in August and enacted on January 20, the day President Barack Obama took office.

It expanded on a 30-year-old law establishing a conscience clause for health-care professionals who don't want to perform abortions.

Under the rule, workers in health-care settings -- from doctors to janitors -- can refuse to provide services, information or advice to patients on subjects such as contraception, family planning, blood transfusions and even vaccine counseling if they are morally against it.

An unnamed official said: we do not want to impose new limitations on services that would allow providers to refuse to provide to women and their families services like family planning and contraception that would actually help prevent the need for an abortion in the first place.

Dr. Suzanne T. Poppema, board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, praised Obama for placing good health care above ideological demands.

Physicians across the country were outraged when the Bush administration, in its final days, limited women's access to reproductive health care. Hundreds of doctors protested these midnight regulations and urged President Obama to repeal them quickly. We are thrilled that President Obama took the first steps today to ensure that our patients' health is once again protected.

An announcement reversing the current rule is expected early next week.

According to a new rule released by the Obama administration, health care workers can still refuse to take part in abortions if they find it morally objectionable but they cannot refuse to give contraception.

After years of debate, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rewrote the Bush-era Conscience Clause, essentially rescinding most of the rules that allowed medical workers to impose their nonsense on others.

The Obama administration weighed whether to change the conscience protection rules or rescind it altogether.

The the Department of Healt said:

The federal provider conscience statutes were intended to protect health care providers from being forced to participate in medical procedures that violated their moral and religious beliefs. They were never intended to allow providers to refuse to provide medical care to an individual because the individual engaged in behavior the health care provider found objectionable.

The new rule goes into effect in mid March 2011.

Church officials and birth control proponents are at odds regarding new legislation that could prevent pharmacy employees from denying the sale of contraceptives because of their religious beliefs.

Senator Frank Lautenberg and Representative Carolyn Maloney have introduced the Access to Birth Control Act in response to a report from the Institute of Medicine that recommended that birth control be made available without insurance surcharge.

Also: This legislation would prevent a pharmacy from interfering in the personal medical decisions made by a patient and her doctor, said Lautenberg in a recent press release. Birth control is basic health care for women. ... By guaranteeing access to birth control, we can ensure that women are never denied the right to make responsible decisions about their reproductive health.