WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – A network of medical training programs that receive federal funding may be violating federal conscience protections by compelling participants to undergo abortion training, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is warning.
ADF’s February 20 letter to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) concerns 49 residency programs that receive federal tax dollars and are certified by or otherwise affiliated with the Reproductive Health Education in Family Medicine (RHEDI) training program. “All RHEDI programs incorporate a reproductive justice framework in their approach to teaching and have dedicated faculty to support residents interested in family planning,” declares Training in Early Abortion for Comprehensive Healthcare (TEACH), RHEDI’s parent organization.
RHEDI boasts an abortion curriculum that is “fully integrated” with the rest of its training. The program states outright that “residents cannot opt out of didactics on abortion,” and severely limits opt-outs from actually participating in abortions. Program operators can declare opt-outs an ““imposition of religious or moral beliefs on patients, negatively affect a patient’s health, are based on scientific misinformation, or create or reinforce racial or socioeconomic inequalities”; and beyond that place limits on the percentages of opt-outs accepted; “not more than 20% of residents overall will opt out of” chemical abortion instruction, and “not more than 40% will opt out of procedural abortion training.”
The letter identifies hundreds of millions of dollars received by health institutions that host RHEDI programs, all in the 2025 fiscal year alone. The letter argues that the associations put the funding in violation of longstanding federal conscience protection laws, including the Church Amendments, Coats-Snowe Amendment, and Weldon Amendment, with the responsibility to enforce those protections falling to HHS.
“It is simply impermissible for an HHS-funded family medicine program to structure itself with any limitation on objections to participation in any aspect of abortion training based on religious beliefs or moral convictions opposed to such participation,” ADF argues. “No family medicine residency can tell applicants or employees that any aspect of abortion is a necessary part of the program, much less a ‘fully integrated’ aspect that limits optouts.”
“Doctors and medical professionals are bound by oath to ‘do no harm.’ Yet some federally funded health care programs across the nation are compelling future doctors to train how to perform abortions or push gender ideology, in direct contradiction of their religious or ethical beliefs,” ADF senior counsel Matt Bowman said. “President (Donald) Trump’s health department has rightly sought to ‘enforce conscience rights and protect human life’ and now, it has a stellar opportunity to further that effort by investigating whether these health care entities are violating federal law. Not a single tax dollar should fund the harming of children—born or unborn.”
Taxpayer funding has been the area in which the second Trump administration has most closely kept to the pro-life record of the first. Within weeks of returning to office, President Trump began enforcing the Hyde amendment, which bans direct federal funding of most abortions; reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which forbids non-governmental organizations from using taxpayer dollars for elective abortions abroad; and cut millions in pro-abortion subsidies by freezing U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spending.
However, Trump recently revived pro-life worries when he told a gathering of House Republicans “you’ve got to be a little flexible on Hyde” for the sake of reaching a deal in the narrowly divided Congress on health care reform, an issue that has picked up steam in recent weeks due to the recent expiration of subsidies under the so-called Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare). The declaration sparked alarm and protest from pro-life leaders and activists, many of whom framed Hyde as one of the federal government’s most basic and non-negotiable pro-life obligations.
Asked about the comment the next day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied any change in position and touted the second Trump administration’s record so far of opposing taxpayer funding of abortion but did not specifically rule out some sort of compromise on Hyde in healthcare negotiations, leaving the controversy unresolved.
