The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds.
The Republican dominated House passed the measure as dozens of Catholics looked on from the gallery. The Michigan Catholic Conference, which pushed for the bills, hosted a legislative day for Catholics on Wednesday at the state Capitol.
The bills now go the Senate, which also is controlled by Republicans.
The Conscientious Objector Policy Act would allow health care providers to assert their objection within 24 hours of when they receive notice of a patient or procedure with which they don’t agree. However, it would prohibit emergency treatment to be refused.”
I am not surprised that a state legislature beholden to far-right religious fanatics would pass such legislation, but as a physician I assert that any health care professional who declines to provide service to someone because of the patient’s religious or sexual preferences should have an ethics complaint filed against them with their state licensing board. This should happen again and again, for every infringement, until the burden of responding to so many complaints is untenable for the subject and the licensing board of the state that passed such inane legislation. And I will join Atrios in pledging to be part of a network to ‘out’ any healthcare provider who avails themselves of the protections of this bill, for purposes both of public shaming and boycotting their business and hopefully impacting them significantly where it hurts.
