A new law known as the “right of conscience” ruled passed by the Bush administration thus making people to strongly react against it. The National Family and Reproductive Health Association stated that the "new regulations will limit access to contraception to low-income and uninsured women and men and will create new hurdles for family-planning service providers," and from the National Partnership for Women and Families, which said, "These regulations leave the term “abortion” undefined, so individuals and institutions are free to classify birth control as abortion."

Therefore hospital and clinic workers cannot be required to perform such legal procedures as abortion, sterilization or contraception, even if it is part of their job. But the whole idea behind the new right of conscience rule is to protect health care workers. This rule gives them the right to say that they do not want to take part in certain medical procedures.

Issued December 18, the rule allows the federal government to withhold funds from health care facilities if they do not permit workers to opt out of performing medical procedures they find objectionable based on religious or moral grounds.

The rule, which will take effect the day before Bush leaves office, allows employees of entities that receive federal grants to refuse to provide medical information and services they object to, based on ethical, moral or religious beliefs.

The law has long allowed doctors and nurses to refuse to participate in an abortion. But these new changes elevate the so-called right to refuse beyond reason to an increased number of medical institutions and a broad range of health care workers and services, including abortion referrals, unbiased counseling and provision of emergency contraception, even to rape victims. The impact will be hardest on poor women who rely on public programs for their health care.