One of the proudest parts of my time at HHS has been supporting our efforts to protect life at every stage—to help ensure our department is, in every sense of the word, the Department of Life. I am proud to have played a role, and you can be, too. We could not have done what we’ve done under President Trump and Vice President Pence without your help.
Thank you, Brooke [Rollins], and thank you, Mr. Vice President, for bringing us together for this event today.
It’s great to be with so many people who are so committed to protecting the fundamental rights that have made our country great.
I especially want to thank Vice President Pence for his unwavering commitment to the causes of life and religious liberty, which has helped advance them in unprecedented ways under this Administration.
It would take a rather lengthy speech to highlight everything HHS has accomplished in this realm over the past few years, so I want to just highlight a few areas I’m particularly proud of.
Under President Trump, HHS has led the way on promoting a culture of life.
We finalized a new Title X regulation to ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t supporting abortion as a method of family planning, requiring Title X services be delivered at a separate location than abortions.
We rescinded a guidance that had prohibited state Medicaid programs from taking steps to ensure federal funds were not going to support abortion providers, and we approved a waiver for Texas to ensure that abortion providers weren’t receiving Medicaid funds.
These efforts require a partnership between the federal government and state and local leaders, so I want to thank all of the state and local pro-life leaders we have here today—this Administration values your efforts and recognizes we couldn’t be where we are today without you.
We’ve also been protecting conscience rights more aggressively than any previous administration.
The HHS Office for Civil Rights, led by Roger Severino, established its first-ever Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, tasked with making sure our nation’s conscience and religious freedom laws are never again treated like second-class rights.
Today, we’re pleased to be announcing two actions out of that office that demonstrate our commitment to the enforcement these laws, to ensuring they are not merely words on paper.
First, we are taking enforcement action against the state of California for imposing universal abortion coverage mandates on health insurance in the state.
We have informed California that this policy clearly violates federal conscience laws, but the state refuses to fix the issue and comply.
Accordingly, we plan to withhold $200 million in federal Medicaid funds from the state in the first quarter of 2021.
Unless California amends its policies, we will seek to withhold an additional $200 million every quarter until it complies.
Second, the Department of Justice is filing a lawsuit on our behalf in a separate conscience violation issue, which Claire will discuss shortly.
This commitment to protecting the dignity of human life and Americans’ conscience and religious freedom rights has also continued during our response to COVID-19.
We’ve taken action to ensure that states and healthcare providers do not discriminate on the basis of age or disability in the allocation of life-saving medical care, and we’ve helped resolve numerous religious discrimination complaints ensuring hospital patients have access to clergy during the pandemic.
As many of you know, we also collaborated with the Departments of Labor and Treasury to protect American employers, including organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor, that have religious or moral objections to providing coverage for contraceptives in their health insurance plans.
This past summer, by a 7–2 majority, the Supreme Court upheld our statutory authority to issue those important exemptions to protect conscience.
The success we’ve had wouldn’t be possible without the strong support of Attorney General Barr and the Department of Justice.
I’d like to thank Claire for being here to represent the good people at DOJ, who have been tireless in their efforts to uphold the law and protect conscience rights of every American.
Finally, this administration’s efforts haven’t been confined to our borders.
In later October, Secretary Pompeo and I co-hosted the virtual signing ceremony of the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a historic document and commitment to life co-sponsored by the United States, Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, and Uganda.
The Declaration comes out of an international coalition that we’ve built under the Trump Administration to achieve better health for women, the preservation of human life, support for the family as foundational to a healthy society, and the protection of national sovereignty in global politics.
As of today, the Declaration has been signed by 35 countries representing more than 1.6 billion people—nearly 20 percent of the U.N.’s member states.
This coalition is unfortunately necessary because of efforts by other wealthy countries to bully smaller countries on these issues, and we’ve been proud to help them fight back under President Trump—to help lead the resistance, you might say!
This declaration will live on as a commitment of these countries to those important goals.
It is, without contest, the most significant international commitment made in the history of the pro-life movement, and the participating countries remain bound to working together to protect life and the family.
To close, I want to acknowledge all the hard, dedicated work that each of you here today has done to protect life and protect the freedoms promised by our Constitution.
One of the proudest parts of my time at HHS has been supporting our efforts to protect life at every stage—to help ensure our department is, in every sense of the word, the Department of Life. I am proud to have played a role, and you can be, too. We could not have done what we’ve done under President Trump and Vice President Pence without your help.
Over the past few years, I’ve never tired of stating this fact: there has never been a more pro-life and pro-religious freedom Administration in our country’s history!
Thank you all for helping make that happen, and thank you for your support over these past several years.
