Last week’s episode of our weekly podcast featured special guest U.S. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma. In this episode, Senator Lankford and AAPLOG CEO Dr. Christina Francis sat down together to discuss the Senator’s recently introduced bill protecting medical professionals’ conscience rights. The Conscience Protection Act, which was introduced to the Senate on June 12, protects medical professionals, healthcare facilities, and insurance providers from government discrimination if they decline to participate in induced abortions, and most importantly provides a private right of action for victims of conscience discrimination.
The bill has been endorsed by AAPLOG’s newly-launched 501(c)4 advocacy arm, AAPLOG Action. AAPLOG Action is now officially working to restore trust in medicine and to advocate tirelessly for the holistic health needs of women and their children, ensuring their voices, and yours, are heard and acted upon in policy decisions. AAPLOG Action is proud to make this bill one of its first endorsements because the issue of conscience rights is one that greatly impacts our members. Today, only the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can bring action against employers who violate their employees’ conscience rights, but HHS’s willingness to pursue cases depends upon the ideological bent of the presidential administration in office. In this podcast episode, Senator Lankford and Dr. Francis discuss one salient example – the case of a Vermont nurse who was fired from her hospital job for refusing to participate in an abortion. The case against her former employers was originally brought by the HHS under the Trump administration, but when the pro-abortion Biden administration took office, they almost immediately dropped the case, leaving this nurse with no recourse for having her federally protected rights violated.
We were honored to have Senator Lankford join us on our podcast and proud to support his important efforts to protect the conscience rights of medical professionals. You can follow AAPLOG Action’s work by clicking here and signing up for the mailing list.
