‘Medical conscience’ bill is more about religious privilege

Once again, the Kentucky leg­is­la­ture has pro­duced a bill clear­ly show­ing just how pet­ty and petu­lant it can be.

Senate Bill 72, co-spon­sored by eight Republicans, is inno­cent­ly intro­duced as: AN ACT relat­ing to the recruit­ment and reten­tion of health care pro­fes­sion­als and declar­ing an emergency.

You see, when you add those last three words to a bill, it prompts the mem­bers of the leg­is­la­ture to for­go leg­isla­tive pro­to­cols in order to get it passed as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, with the least exam­i­na­tion as possible.

The bill has been labeled a “med­ical con­science” bill by those who oppose it, pri­mar­i­ly because the rea­son­ing list­ed in the intro­duc­tion of the bill is a load of hooey.  It has noth­ing to do with recruit­ment or reten­tion.  It has only to do with impos­ing reli­gious pref­er­ences in the med­ical treat­ment of indi­vid­u­als when doc­tors, nurs­es, med­ical insti­tu­tions, and even insur­ance com­pa­nies can refuse med­ical ser­vice based only on the reli­gious prej­u­dices of a doc­tor, nurse, med­ical insti­tu­tion or insur­ance company.

Reading the “WHEREASes” that pref­ace the bill shows some pret­ty lame excus­es for the bill: forc­ing health care pro­fes­sion­als to vio­late their con­science could force them out of their pro­fes­sion; it is com­mon for doc­tors, med­ical stu­dents, and oth­er health care pro­fes­sion­als to face work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion for declin­ing to par­tic­i­pate in activ­i­ties or pro­vide med­ical pro­ce­dures to which they have moral or reli­gious objec­tions; [it would be inter­est­ing to know how many such cas­es are report­ed in Kentucky each year]; forc­ing doc­tors (et al) to vio­late their con­science could exac­er­bate and lead to addi­tion­al increas­es in short­ages; neigh­bor­ing states have pro­vid­ed com­pre­hen­sive pro­tec­tions for rights of conscience.

[It’s inter­est­ing how our leg­is­la­ture uses the activ­i­ties of oth­er states to either sup­port or deny sim­i­lar laws, depend­ing on how it ben­e­fits the indi­vid­u­als propos­ing the law.]

One very inter­est­ing sec­tion of the bill is SECTION 2(3)(a) “Discrimination”: Means any adverse action tak­en against, or any threat of adverse action com­mu­ni­cat­ed to, a health care pro­fes­sion­al or health care insti­tu­tion as a result of exer­cis­ing his, her, or its rights under Sections 1 to 6 of this Act: [bold, under­line and ital­ics in original].

It is cer­tain­ly telling that the law would allow health care pro­fes­sion­als and insti­tu­tions to dis­crim­i­nate against an indi­vid­ual while sub­se­quent­ly remov­ing the rights of an indi­vid­ual to health care because they may hold some diver­gent views or lifestyles that don’t fit in with those of the provider(s).

Already, in oth­er states where such laws have been passed, a woman was denied self-request­ed ster­il­iza­tion because of “a duty to pro­tect her sacred fer­til­i­ty.”  Another woman in Tennessee, where such laws have been passed, was denied pre­na­tal care because she was unmarried.

Will a physi­cian or nurse refuse to admin­is­ter a vac­cine because they believe vac­cines cause autism? Will a phar­ma­cist refuse to dis­pense birth con­trol because he believes that absti­nence is the only cor­rect method of birth con­trol?  Will hos­pi­tals refuse to treat gay indi­vid­u­als or gay couples?

Whatever hap­pened to the Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm”? Is it not harm­ful to turn away patients because of some reli­gious­ly held belief?

There is no empir­i­cal evi­dence that any of the “where­as­es” in this bill are even remote­ly occur­ring; it is noth­ing more than a bill to per­mit reli­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion under the force of law.

When see­ing how this bill is being pre­sent­ed, one might cher­ish the words of Harry Truman: “I think there is an immense short­age of Christian char­i­ty among so-called Christians,” and Ilka Chase: “It is usu­al­ly when men are at their most reli­gious that they behave with the least sense and great­est cruelty.”