The Bush administration with a last minute ruling is set to stop Wisconsin's new law that mandates hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services has set a "provider conscience rule" in motion which allows doctors, nurses and health care providers to refuse to aid in procedures because of their religious and moral beliefs.

Rea Holmes, executive assistant of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services said, "It would in essence nullify our compassionate care law." Under current federal and state law provisions doctors and nurses can opt out of conducting abortions while the new rule now encompasses all health care workers who can now refuse to provide information, including a referral, to patients seeking an abortion.

Many experts say the new rule could mean that the hospital and clinic workers could refuse to provide birth control and other health services. New York Gov. David Paterson said that this could go beyond reproduction and include vaccinations and HIV/AIDS treatments.

"The new HHS rule is President Bush's parting shot at women's access to basic health care," Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU Washington Legislative Office, said in a news release. "This administration has continually put politics and ideology before science and patients' health."

U. S. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin said she was "deeply troubled by the Bush administration's latest attack on patients' rights and the doctor-patient relationship." Medical care, she added, "must be based on science and the patients' best interest, not the providers' religious, political or other philosophical views."

While imposing the new rule the administration cited a 2007 Connecticut law that requires hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims and hospitals that object to it can use independent providers for the procedure. Nicole Safar, legal and policy analyst at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said, "Any state that has patient protections against health care denials based on ideology won't be able to enforce those laws."

Rumors of such a ruling leaked out in the summer which had Gov. Jim Doyle in a letter in late September to Michael Leavitt, secretary of the department; express his "strong opposition" to the proposal. He said the proposed regulation "effectively nullifies" Wisconsin's compassionate care law. He said, "Allowing HHS to impose a federal conscience clause effectively creates a culture of health care refusal, whereby patients can be denied access to any number of services, including HIV/AIDS and fertility care."

Opponents to the rule are hoping President-elect Barack Obama and Congress, once in office would either block the rule or ask for it to be amended. "There is indication on the federal level this is one of the first things they are going to be taking up," said Holmes.

As the published rule leaves abortion undefined it makes it difficult to enforce the compassionate care act while it is in effect. "By taking out the definition of abortion you have the whole debate of when life begins and so emergency contraception could be swept into there," Holmes said. "You could have somebody ready to go into a clinic, ask for E. C. and that provider would have the right to deny the victim."