While the nation remains embroiled in a racial justice crisis and raging pandemic, the Trump administration continues on with its sabotage of our healthcare system. This time it's once again appealing to the right-wing evangelicals by targeting women and LGBTQ+ people. The administration has finalized a rule its been working on for months to remove women seeking abortions and LGBTQ+ people from the nondiscrimination protections created by the Affordable Care Act.
Simply put, healthcare workers, providers, and insurance companies could refuse to provide services to and retain federal funding from these populations. That means they can refuse to provide or to cover abortions or transition-related care for transgender people. All in the name of "religious freedom." The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) says it "respects the dignity of every human being, and as we have shown in our response to the pandemic, we vigorously protect and enforce the civil rights of all to the fullest extent permitted by our laws as passed by Congress." Every human being who is not a woman of child-bearing age or LGBTQ+. It's also pretty fucking rich that they invoke the pandemic when HHS has so massively screwed up in responding to it, and when the pandemic is infecting and killing so many people of color at such an alarming rate.
"We are unwavering in our commitment to enforcing civil rights in healthcare," continued Office for Civil Rights Director Roger Severino. The rule it is replacing, created by the Obama administration, barred any provider or insurance company from refusing to treat or refusing to cover treatment for people based on their gender identity or the procedure they were seeking, e.g., abortion. The Trump rule is a companion rule to one that would allow providers to deny care based on their religious beliefs. It has already been tossed by three courts and is now under appeal in the Second Circuit. This rule is almost certainly going to be challenged as well. Lambda Legal spokeswoman Sasha Buchert promised a challenge when the rule was proposed a year ago.