In bill, doctor’s conscience dictates care

Critic rips legislation as ‘license to discriminate’ with medical treatment

Family Council-backed legislation introduced last week would allow medical professionals and health care facilities and payers to refuse treatment for patients if doing so would interfere with their “conscience.”

House Bill 1628, which is titled the Healthcare Freedom of Conscience Act, would allow health care professionals, facilities and payers to refuse to provide a treatment without facing retaliation or punishment from their employers or patients.

The bill would extend the protections to medical professionals such as doctors, pharmacists, nurses and social workers; facilities such as hospitals and clinics; and payers such as insurance companies. It establishes a route for legal remedy if they are penalized for declining treatment. However, it does not offer protection if the treatment is needed for an emergency life-saving procedure.

Supporters of the bill say it is needed to protect the religious freedoms of those opposed to specific procedures — such as certain surgeries or blood transfusions — but opponents say the bill is written broadly enough to allow for discrimination of patients based on sexual orientation or other personal factors.

The Family Council asked Rep. Brandt Smith, R-Jonesboro, to sponsor the bill. Its Senate sponsors are Sen. Jason Rapert, R-Bigelow, and Sen. Linda Collins-Smith, R-Pocahontas.

Asked if the bill would allow physicians to deny services to patients because they are gay, Smith said he hoped it would not, adding that he “could not support that kind of legislation that is that abusive.”

The bill provides no specific protections for sexual or gender identity. It does state that its protections apply only to “individual health care services” and do not allow refusal of services to patients based on their “identity or

status.”

Luke McCoy, the lobbyist for the Family Council who has worked on the bill, said “identity” as included in the bill does not presently cover gay or transgender people, but it could at some point in the future.

“I don’t want this to cause a problem; I want it to prevent a problem,” McCoy said.

The problem, McCoy said, is that Arkansas’ current conscientious objection statutes are narrowly tailored to allow doctors to opt out of performing abortions and abortion-related counseling. Those protections do not extend to insurance providers and do not cover other health care services, such as working with stem cells.

HB1628 would create “umbrella” protections throughout the health care sector, McCoy said.

Providing his own example, Smith said the legislation would protect a Muslim doctor from performing heart surgery with the heart valves of a pig, if he has religious objections.

However, no physicians have reached out asking for such protections, according Arkansas Medical Society Executive Vice President David Wroten, who said the statewide association would “definitely have concerns” with the legislation.

“Insurance companies do not have consciences” because they are not people, Wroten said. HB1628 could open the door to them declining to provide coverage for things such as birth control. The association will reach out to the bill’s sponsors once it has completed a review of the legislation, he said.

Kendra Johnson, the Arkansas director of the Human Rights Campaign, said previous legislation, including the state’s 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, offers similar religious protections to Arkansans without going as far as the HB1628.

“This is a license to discriminate in the health care setting,” Johnson said.

Last year, Arkansas lawmakers approved new ethics rules allowing counselors to turn away clients for reasons of conscience. Legislative approval came despite objections from the American Counseling Association, which said such a rule would violate national standards.

Smith said he does not foresee that the legislation would cause difficulty for people to find care, and that doctors would simply ask their colleagues to perform services they object to. He said the Catholic Diocese of Arkansas had expressed interest in the bill.

The diocese is reviewing the bill but had not taken a stance as of Friday, said Chancellor Dennis Lee, who added that the church does not operate any of the Catholic hospitals in the state. Patrick Gallagher, a lobbyist for the Catholic Charities of Arkansas, said his group had had talks with the sponsors.

The group’s concern is with providing services such as abortion and counseling of

contraception, Gallagher said, and not with the people it serves. Gallagher said he had not yet reviewed the bill, which was filed Tuesday.

According to the Family Council, similar legislation has passed in Illinois and Mississippi. Health care “conscience” legislation has also been filed in the U.S. House and Senate.

The bill has been referred to the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee.