Re: “Workers need protection of moral convictions” (letter, 9-2).

The writer argues that “the federal Department of Health and Human Services issued proposed rules that would protect the conscience rights of health-care workers in facilities that receive federal funding.”

What actually is happening goes much further. This is not Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt’s first time to come down on the side of denying patient care in favor of provider ideology.

It is already possible for providers to refuse to perform abortions.The regulation as written would considerably broaden the possible definitions of abortion (even so far as referring to public opinion surveys, against leading medical opinion) in supporting a definition that includes pre-implantation fertilized eggs. Very quickly, Leavitt’s original intent becomes everyone’s right to withhold services because the person seeking it doesn’t believe exactly the same things as the person providing it.

We have seen that in the recent Washington state pharmacists’ row over dispensing morning-after contraceptive medication.

Many people have interpreted the draft to be a threat to health care for women. Numerous organizations have written to Leavitt opposing the draft, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Medical Association, the American College of Nurse Midwives, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians. ACOG called the draft “an affront to health professionals and to American women.”

These outrageous efforts will worsen if John McCain and Sarah Palin have their way in November.