WASHINGTON — The outgoing Bush administration is planning to announce a broad new “right of conscience” rule permitting medical facilities, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health-care workers to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable, including abortion and possibly even artificial insemination and birth control.

Health and Human Services Department officials said the rule would apply to “any entity” that receives federal funds. It estimated 584,000 entities could be covered, including 4,800 hospitals, 234,000 doctor’s offices and 58,000 pharmacies.

For more than 30 years, federal law has dictated that doctors and nurses may refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further by making clear that health-care workers may also refuse to provide information or advice to patients who might want an abortion.

It also would cover more employees. For example, in addition to a surgeon and a nurse in an operating room, the rule would extend to “an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments,” the draft rule said.

While the rule eventually could be overturned by the new administration, the process could open a wound that could take months of wrangling to close again.