First, Do Some Harm

The Trump regime wants the Health and Human Services department's civil rights office to shift from "stopping discrimination in health care practices" to "enshrining the right of discrimination in health care practices if Jesus says so."

The Trump administration on Thursday will announce an overhaul of the HHS civil rights office as part of a broader plan to protect health workers who don't want to perform abortions, treat transgender patients seeking to transition or provide other services for which they have religious or moral objections. 

Under a proposed rule — which has been closely guarded at HHS and is now under review by the White House — the civil rights office would be empowered to further shield these workers and punish organizations that don’t allow them to express their religious and moral objections, according to sources on and off the Hill. That would be a significant shift for the office, which currently focuses on enforcing federal civil rights and health care privacy laws.

HHS is planning to announce the changes at its headquarters Thursday morning.
The department's leaders have repeatedly criticized the Obama administration for rolling back regulations dating to the George W. Bush administration that legally insulated health care workers while affirming their religious freedoms. 

Roger Severino, the Trump administration appointee who now leads the HHS civil rights office, has repeatedly stressed that strengthening conscience protections for health care workers is a top priority for his office. 

That's alarmed advocates for LGBT patients, who say they're already fighting to overcome stigmas and discrimination and who warn that the policy shift will only worsen their situation. 

"This is the use of religion to hurt people because you disapprove of who they are," said Harper Jean Tobin of the National Center for Transgender Equality. "Any rule that grants a license to discriminate would be a disgrace and a mockery of the principal of religious freedom we all cherish."

This will give "legal protections" to doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals who refuse to treat certain patients or perform certain procedures.  In other words, if you're LBGTQ and go to the ER and the doc on duty says "I don't treat transgender or gay people" and you die, the Trump regime's top priority is getting that doc off the legal hook.  Yay!

I don't understand how you get "conscience protections" as a health care worker.  It's like the Trump regime wants a Supreme Court case where an ER doc or paramedic says "I don't want to treat this gay person/Muslim/black person because I am a devout Christian" and the patient dies as a result.

That's where this is going to go, and it's going to be brutally ugly when it gets there.