HealthDay News -- Some of the nation's largest medical groups are objecting to a final regulation issued by the Bush administration to "clarify" the scope of existing federal "medical conscience" laws.

They say the Dec.18, 2008, ruling, which took effect January 20 of this year, could affect a swath of healthcare services -- beyond abortion -- and may stymie access to care and biomedical innovation. It is one of several Bush-era rules that the Obama administration is reviewing and may seek to overturn, The Wall Street Journal has reported.

Proponents of the new conscience protection rule, including the Christian Medical Association, Catholic Health Association and Care Net (a network of pro-life pregnancy centers), insist the rule is necessary to protect healthcare providers from discrimination and ensure patient access to ethical care.

"Doctors and other health care providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience," Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Mike Leavitt said in a prepared statement. "This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience."

Meanwhile, a legal effort is underway to reverse the ruling.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal filed a lawsuit in federal court Jan. 15 on behalf of his state, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.

"On its way out, the Bush administration has left a ticking legal time bomb set to explode literally the day of the inaugural and blow apart vital constitutional rights and women's health care," Blumenthal said in a statement. "Women's health may be endangered -- needlessly and unlawfully -- if this rule is allowed to stand."

Dr. Susan M. Haack, who practices gynecology in Mauston, Wisc., a small, rural area about 75 miles northwest of Madison, is among the proponents of the new rule. "If I am forced to do abortions -- and I choose not to do that -- I will quit," she said. Women in the region, as a result, would have limited access to basic gynecologic health care, she said.

The HHS rule seeks to avoid situations like that by ensuring compliance with existing federal statutes that protect health care providers from being coerced to provide care they find morally or religiously objectionable. Violators could lose their federal funding.

"I see it as the Bush administration's attempt to reemphasize that these laws are still in effect," said Haack, a member of The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Ill.

Others say it does much more than that. In comments to HHS, the American Medical Association, 27 state medical associations and a dozen other medical groups, including the American College of Family Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, urged the government to withdraw the rule.

The medical groups said the rule goes beyond its stated purpose and could be read to include "virtually any medical treatment or service, or biomedical and behavioral research." Likewise, they expressed concern that the rule expands the range of health care institutions and individuals who may refuse to provide services.

What's more, the rule could undermine patients' access to medical care and information, they said.

Dan W. Brock, professor of medical ethics in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, agrees that the rule could impede access to certain "controversial" services, a list the could include providing contraceptive services to an unmarried couple, administering the HPV vaccine to young girls and providing terminal sedation to a dying patient.

"Many physicians now believe they should inform and refer [with regard to] services they object to, which I believe is correct," he said, "whereas the Bush policy does not require this."