Rolling Back Women’s Rights NYTimes Editorial

Tucked into the $388 billion budget measure just approved by the House and Senate is a sweeping provision that has nothing to do with the task Congress had at hand – providing money for the government. In essence, it tells health care companies, hospitals and insurance companies they are free to ignore Roe v. Wade and state and local laws and regulations currently on the books to make certain that women’s access to reproductive health services includes access to abortion. …

This represents a vast expansion of the “conscience protection” that federal law currently gives to individual doctors who do not want to undergo abortion training.

The affront to women’s rights, moreover, should not obscure the serious threat to the First Amendment involved in enacting what is likely to evolve into a domestic “gag rule” as, one by one, health care providers order doctors they employ not to provide patients with information about the abortion option. This echoes the way Mr. Bush reimposed a blanket Reagan-era gag rule for providers of reproductive health services abroad on his first full day in office back in 2001.

Unfortunately, vocal opposition from Democrats and a handful of Republican moderates was not enough to stop the pernicious assault on the rights of millions of women from becoming law in the rush to pass the spending bill. … Americans, and American women in particular, are officially on notice that post-election, the Republican war on reproductive rights has entered an ominous new phase.