Obama vows to protect 'conscience clauses'

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Thursday that he still favors a "robust" federal policy protecting health-care workers who have moral objections to performing some procedures, even though he plans to roll back a Bush administration rule that expanded such protection.

Speaking to eight religion reporters at the White House before his first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI on July 10, Obama sought to reassure Catholic health-care workers that they would not be forced to perform abortions. Obama said he is a "believer in conscience clauses" and that a new policy would "certainly not be weaker" than what existed before Bush expanded it late in his administration.

Shortly after taking office, Obama announced plans to roll back the Bush policy, which would have cut off federal funding for thousands of state and local governments, hospitals, health plans, clinics and other entities if they do not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists or other employees who refuse to participate in care they feel violates their personal, moral or religious beliefs.

But Obama's plans have led to fears among Catholic doctors and other health-care providers that they would be forced to perform abortions, sterilizations and other procedures that violate Catholic teachings, despite federal laws protecting their right to refuse to perform such procedures.

The Health and Human Services Department is reviewing hundreds of thousands of public comments it received in response to the Obama administration's Feb. 27 announcement it planned to rescind the Bush rule.

Obama's trip to the Vatican will coincide with his participation in the Group of Eight summit, a meeting of leaders of the world's richest nations, July 8-10.

Obama said he hopes to come out of the meeting with the pope with an agreement to cooperate in several areas including Mideast peace, poverty, climate change, immigration and other issues in which he said that Benedict has shown "extraordinary leadership,"

But, he added in the 45-minute session in the Roosevelt Room, while the two have areas of "deep agreement ... there are areas of some disagreement." Those areas include abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research, which Obama supports but Catholics say violate their moral teachings.

The American Catholic church has been riven with conflict over abortion recently, and Obama found himself in the middle of that debate recently when he accepted an invitation to speak at the commencement at the University of Notre Dame.

Conservative Catholics were angry with the Catholic school, and more than 60 bishops condemned the university for welcoming the president.

In the White House interview , Obama said he has not written off working with the American bishops because of the controversy, as some influential bishops have feared. He said he has accepted that there are areas in which he and the bishops would not agree.

"That's healthy," he said.

Staff writer Rob Stein contributed to this report.