Workers' Religious Freedom vs. Patients' Rights

"You could imagine a group of people with less than honorable intentions seeking to get hired at a family planning clinic with the specific objective of obstructing access. Under this regulation, there is little you could do about it," said Jill Morrison of the National Women's Law Center.

Others said the rule could have additional implications, including justifying discrimination against gays, single women or others seeking health care.

"As soon as you have a definition in one part of federal law, it can become the inspiration for the reinterpretation of other statutes," said R. Alta Charo, a lawyer and bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Supporters dismissed such predictions.

"This would essentially simply require people to comply with laws that they have been required to comply with for decades," said M. Casey Mattox of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom. "That does not mean any organization or state can't keep doing exactly what it's been doing. It means they have to make room for people who have sincere moral or ethical concerns about doing something."

Conservative groups including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Concerned Women for America and the Catholic Medical Association said the regulation is needed.

David Christensen of the Family Research Council said: "Health-care professionals should not be forced to engage in an action that they see is the taking of a human life. Federal funds shouldn't be used for that kind of pressure."

Christensen and others said the regulations spell out legitimate differing views about what constitutes abortion and when life begins.

Richard S. Myers, a law professor at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., said: "Religious freedom is an important part of the history of this country. People who have a religious or moral belief should not be forced to participate in an act they find abhorrent."