MashGet

President Barack Obama said today 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.