News :: GLBT
Bush’s parting gift: Anti-gay ’right of conscience’ rules for medical professionals by Ethan Jacobs
associate editorWednesday Dec 24, 2008 LGBT advocates worry that new regulations authorized by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) in the last weeks of the Bush administration could give medical providers the right to deny treatment to LGBT people. The so-called "right of conscience" rules would allow medical providers and other employees in the healthcare field to refuse to provide treatment or other services that they believe violate their religious or moral beliefs.
The American Medical Association (AMA) and a coalition of other professional healthcare organizations have publicly opposed the new regulations, claiming that they could give a broad range of workers in the healthcare field the right to deny patients access to services such as fertility treatments, birth control and emergency contraception. Yet LGBT advocates are worried the regulations could provide much broader protections to medical providers to discriminate against LGBT patients.
"I think they are extremely broad and poorly conceived and give license to providers to practice a type of discriminatory medicine that I think we never want to see practiced in the United States," said Stephen Boswell, president and CEO of Fenway Community Health.
The new regulations would seem to contradict a September decision by the California Supreme Court, which ruled that a group of doctors violated the law by refusing to provide fertility treatments to a lesbian couple, citing their religious views about their sexual orientation. Yet Boswell said he believes the regulation could go further, giving providers the right to refuse to provide treatment to any person who identifies as LGBT.
"I think it’s far worse than that. I have witnessed at a medical school that educates a lot of Mormon students - a class of 175 with maybe 15 Mormon students in it - I witnessed some of those medical students say they would not care for someone who told them they were LGB or T," said Boswell. "This is in my view very dangerous to head down this path. One of the basic tenets of medicine in the nation is we care for everyone regardless of who they are."
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), who is openly gay, also believes the new regulations could have disastrous implications for the LGBT community.
"The refusal clause goes beyond women’s health and a woman’s right to an abortion or birth control. Under the new regulations, a doctor may also refuse to treat a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person," wrote Baldwin in a statement on the new regulations. "Medical care must be based on science and the patients’ best interest, not the providers’ religious, political, or other philosophical views. I will work with my partners in Congress and the Obama Administration to ensure that a patient’s health and safety are always paramount."
A spokesman for President-Elect Barack Obama told the Wall Street Journal that he opposes the new rule and that he "will review all 11th-hour regulations and will address them once he is president." Press reports speculate that the new regulations could take months to undo. The Obama transition team did not respond to an interview request from Bay Windows.
The AMA provided Bay Windows with a copy of a letter sent by the organization and a coalition of other national and state health organizations - including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Emergency Physicians, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists - announcing their opposition to the new regulations. The coalition sent the letter to DHHS in September while the regulations were still under consideration.
"However, while we support the legitimate conscience rights of individual health care professionals, the exercise of these rights must be balanced against the fundamental obligations of the medical profession and physicians’ paramount responsibility and commitment to serving the needs of their patients," the coalition wrote. "As advocates for our patients, we strongly support patients’ access to comprehensive reproductive health care and freedom of communication between physicians and their patients, and oppose government interference in the practice of medicine or the use of health care funding mechanisms to deny established and accepted medical care to any segment of the population."
Boswell said he worries the new regulations could do the most harm in areas where there are only a small number of medical providers offering services.
"One of the things that concerns me is in areas where there are little resources for providers, rural areas and small towns and cities where particular disciplines are less available, and if you get one of those docs who has a quote unquote ’moral disposition’ toward an individual who presents to them, it can be tremendously dangerous for a patient," said Boswell.
Ethan Jacobs can be reached at ejacobs@baywindows.com
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