Archbishop, witnesses testify to religious freedom risks health care providers face

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — Conscience protections for faith-based health providers remain a key religious freedom concern, witnesses at a March 16 meeting of the Department of Justice’s Religious Liberty Commission said.

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, one of the witnesses at the hearing, said in his testimony that “without the freedom to publicly witness to our faith through charitable works, everyone suffers.”

“In California, where I am from, there is a Catholic hospital being sued by the state because it refuses to offer abortions,” Archbishop Cordileone said in reference to a lawsuit filed by California Attorney General Rob Bonta against Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Eureka. Bonta sued the hospital in 2024, arguing its policy against performing an abortion when a fetal heartbeat is present constituted unlawful discrimination.

“Should the courts rule the wrong way, in this case, all Catholic hospitals in California will be threatened,” Archbishop Cordileone argued.

The commission, established by President Donald Trump in May, includes Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, retired archbishop of New York, and Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minn., among its members. The commissioners gathered at the Museum of the Bible in Washington to examine what recommendations they should make to the president about promoting and protecting religious freedom in a report when it concludes its hearings, expected later in spring.

One area witnesses identified as rife with potential religious liberty concerns is medically assisted suicide, which involves doctors prescribing lethal drugs for a patient to take their own lives under certain criteria. Assisted suicide and euthanasia, which involves a health practitioner lethally injecting a patient that meets certain criteria, are sometimes referred to as medical aid in dying, or MAiD. They are opposed by the Catholic Church as being grave violations of human life and therefore morally unacceptable responses to treating human suffering.

Dr. Kenneth Prager, a pulmonologist and director of clinical ethics and chairman of the Medical Ethics Committee at Columbia University Medical Center, said that as an observant Jew, he believes that while it “may be permitted to remove an impediment to a peaceful death,” one is “never allowed to intentionally hasten death or to intentionally cause death.”

Pointing to a growing number of states that have legalized the practice, Prager said that while all states “allow physicians to recuse themselves from participating in MAiD on the basis of conscientious objections,” current laws “vary as to institutional opt-out provisions.”

“States also vary,” he said about what is required of “physicians who recuse themselves to enable their patients to obtain MAiD.”

“For example, must physicians inform a patient of the possibility of MAiD? Must they refer a patient to a physician who will enable physician-assisted suicide?” he asked.

Elsewhere in the hearing, other health care providers or those in related fields argued that matters of abortion and gender remain among other areas of potential violations of conscience rights.

Abby Sinnett, co-founder and CEO of Bella Health and Wellness, testified about her Catholic-based health care clinic in Colorado that filed a lawsuit in response to a state law barring them from offering progesterone in an attempt to counteract the effects of a medication-based abortion. The practice is sometimes called abortion pill reversal.

A federal judge later blocked the state from enforcing the ban against the clinic, citing burden on their religious exercise and a lack of evidence about harm associated with the practice of administering progesterone in that context.

Referring to Sinnett’s case, Bishop Barron said it “just strikes me as a species of insanity” the state argued “you wouldn’t be able, according to someone’s own desire, to reverse that process.”

In another Colorado case, Kaley Chiles, a Christian counselor at the center of Chiles v. Salazar, which the Supreme Court heard in October, said in comments at the hearing, “Young people wrestling with identity deserve counselors who are free to speak, ask questions, listen with compassion and walk alongside them in their search for hope and restoration.”

Chiles challenged a Colorado law banning professional counseling services that practice “conversion therapy” for minors, efforts intended to change a minor’s gender identity, when it is at variance with the young person’s biological sex, or to change their sexual orientation.

Opponents of the law argue it restricts their ability to provide counseling to minors experiencing same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, the feeling of distress that one’s biological sex and gender identity are not aligned. But supporters of the law argue such treatments are discredited and so the ban shields children from treatments they might otherwise be forced to undergo by their parents or guardians.

A ruling in that case is still pending from the high court. Chiles said she is “hopeful they will reaffirm that the government can never censor conversations simply because it disagrees with the client’s personal goals or viewpoint expressed.”

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