Excerpt from the full fact sheet:

On December 19, 2008, the Bush administration published a regulation that may severely hinder or block women's access to birth control and other reproductive-health services. It claims to enforce laws already on the books that allow doctors and other health-care professionals to opt out of providing certain health-care services. NARAL Pro-Choice America does not oppose an individual right of conscience, but this regulation goes much further than providing individuals with a right to refuse to provide services that they oppose; in actuality, it may seriously jeopardize patients' rights to receive quality, comprehensive health-care services. The following provides background on the issue and an analysis of the very serious problems that the regulation may cause.

The Bush administration regulation purports to encourage enforcement of, and education about, the existing laws described above. If that were so, the regulation would not be groundbreaking, necessarily. But in fact, the regulation pushes the bounds of current law and introduces several very serious problems:

• It jeopardizes women's access to birth control by leaving open the possibility that providers will be able to define contraception as abortion; allowing them to do so could thereby expand the conscience protections pertaining to abortion to apply to birth control as well.
  
  
• It expands the universe of individuals and institutions that are explicitly afforded refusal rights. It offers broad rights to employees who are only tangentially involved in providing the services at issue (for example, receptionists scheduling appointments), and it may grant entire health-care corporations (hospitals, HMOs, insurance companies) the same "conscience" rights as those offered to individuals.
  
  
• It allows individuals to refuse to give referrals and information about a broad range of services. Current law allows individuals the right to refuse to refer or counsel patients for abortion services, but the regulation may allow individuals to refuse to provide referrals and information about any health-care services. This could affect reproductive-health services and many other health-care services beyond.
  
  
• It fails to take into consideration laws that protect patients' rights to services and information, potentially limiting patients' abilities to make informed decisions about their own health-care needs and to access legal health-care services.
  

Download the fact sheet (PDF)