The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has threatened to sue a branch of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) if it tries to force religiously affiliated hospitals to perform abortions against the conscientious objections of their doctors and nurses.

The Becket Fund wrote to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union to the CMS which attempts to pressure it into forcing religious hospitals to perform abortions. The CMS is the branch of the HHS which administers the government health insurance schemes which provide most of the funding for American hospitals.

After sending the letter, the ACLU called on its multi-thousand membership to mount a letter campaign to demand abortion services at Catholic hospitals.

Becket Fund President Kevin “Seamus” Hasson wrote: “The ACLU has no business radically re-defining the meaning of ‘emergency health care’.

“Just as it has no business demanding that religious doctors and nurses violate their faith by performing a procedure they believe is tantamount to murder. Forcing religious hospitals to perform abortions not only undermines this nation’s integral commitment to conscience rights, it violates the numerous federal laws that recognise and protect those rights.”

The letter continues: “Forcing Catholic or any religiously-affiliated hospital to perform abortions will only result in nationwide closures, thereby reducing access to healthcare for everyone, a blow the healthcare system could not weather.

“Legally forcing doctors and nurses to perform abortions in violation of their consciences would constitute a large step backwards for religious freedom and would turn this nation’s foundational commitment to conscience rights on its head.”

The ACLU’s letter a recent incident at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, AZ, where a nun, Sr. Margaret McBride was demoted and excommunicated in May for authorising an abortion.

In its letter the ACLU cites 3 other instances of (unnamed) Catholic hospitals supposedly refusing to provide abortions in emergency situations.

The ACLU states these and other hospitals that refuse to commit emergency abortions on religious grounds are violating the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act and the Conditions of Participation of Medicare and Medicaid.

A hospital found in violation of this legislation could lose its Medicare/Medicaid funding, which is usually its main source of income.

Soon after his inauguration, President Barack Obama promised to overturn measures President Bush set in place to enforce the legal right of conscience of medical facilities and personnel.