The Obama administration last Friday issued a revised version of 11th-hour conscience regulations pushed through by the Bush administration. The Bush rule was freighted with problematic language that could have been interpreted to allow health care workers and institutions to opt out of all kinds of treatments (providing contraceptives to single women, e.g., or treating homosexuals) beyond the existing exceptions for abortion and forced sterilization, for example.I have a write-up on the revisions at PoliticsDaily. The Obama rule largely returns conscience protections to the way they were for the previous few decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations -- and under all but the last few weeks of the two Bush terms -- and the Obama rule adds an awareness program and retains an enforcement procedure for those who feel their conscience rights may have been violated.In other words, the Obama regs provide for stronger protection than ever before. Yet what was fascinating to me was to see how many Obama opponents in the pro-life community portrayed the revision as "gutting" conscience provisions or as an "outrageous" attack on religious rights. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler's column, "Conscience Trampled by the Regime," was especially apocalyptic in tone and substance.This strikes me as another example of a reflexive overrreaction to Obama by the right, a reflex developed by years of rhetoric casting him as a sworn enemy of social conservatives (and abortion foes in particular) whose every move would augur untold horrors. Yet when that doesn't happen -- as it has not, again and again -- the "bogeyman" Obama still seems to govern reactions, rather than reality.The USCCB and CHA took a more measured response, expressing some disappointment (the bishops) but generally welcoming the changes. That seems like a response that comports with the facts.

David Gibson is the director of Fordham’s Center on Religion & Culture.

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