In 2008, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopted new regulations, claiming they were needed to protect employees of organizations receiving HHS funds from having to engage in activities they find religiously or morally objectionable.
But well-established protections against discrimination based on religious belief already existed and the new regulations are harmful. These broad and vague regulations put LGBT people and people with HIV at risk by seeming to allow health care providers to refuse to treat them in a medically sound, respectful manner.
