‘Medical conscience’ bill advances in KY. Opponents say it’s a license to discriminate
A Republican bill to codify protections for health care providers who opt out of providing a medical service because of a “sincerely held religious, moral or ethical principles” was approved along party lines in the Kentucky Senate Friday.
Senate Bill 132 says that health care professionals and facilities have the right to refuse to participate in “any health care service which violates his, her, or its conscience.”
“We shouldn’t be forcing health care providers to do things they are morally opposed to, or that they just simply don’t feel comfortable doing,” lead sponsor Sen. Donald Douglas, R-Nicholasville, said on the Senate floor before his proposal passed 26-6.
It now heads to the House for further consideration.
Opponents warned the bill would allow providers to widely discriminate against patients, denying them critical care, including women requiring abortions or transgender patients seeking gender-affirming health care.
“What this bill does is give anyone or any institution in the medical space a license to discriminate,” said Sen. Cassie Chambers-Armstrong, D-Louisville.
“To be honest, it’s one of the broadest authorizations of discrimination that I have ever seen in this body,” she said. “Because it’s not just limited to denying care based on a religious objection, it goes so far to say, an ethical, moral or any other type of conscience objection.
“It means anyone could come up with any reason at any point in time to hold up someone’s health care.”
Douglas, a physician, characterized the bill as a “provider recruitment, economic development bill, and a bill that says to health care providers: we welcome you, we want you here, we will honor your moral conscience, but we also expect the highest level of professionalism.”
In addition to protecting providers’ ability to refuse providing a service or procedure if it violates their personal beliefs, the bill protects those providers from discrimination for exercising that belief, and sets up a cause of action if that provision is violated.
The bill also protects a provider from liability for refusing a service or procedure: any provider or health care institution “shall not be held liable civilly, criminally or administratively for exercising his, her or its right of conscience with respect to a health care service.”
The bill’s conscientious objection protections would not apply to situations when “emergency medical treatment” is needed.
The wide berth granted under the bill is “very concerning,” said Sen. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville.
“It’s just very concerning to me that we continue to pass policy to say people have individual civil rights basically to discriminate against folks, and that we use words like ‘religious’ and ‘ethical beliefs’ to allow that,” she said.
GOP says bill is ‘pro-patient’
Other states that have similar medical “conscience” laws include Ohio, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina and Arkansas.
Kentucky Republicans have tried to pass medical “rights of conscience” bills in recent years, but none have become law.
When Leitchfield Republican Sen. Stephen Meredith filed Senate Bill 90 in 2020 to create a similar objection, he described it as a “firewall” to protect providers who wish to rely on their conscience in a medical field that’s increasingly evolving.
On the Senate floor Friday — and in a March 3 Senate Health and Family Services Committee meeting — Meredith, a co-sponsor of Douglas’ bill, re-stated this need to protect against the “corporatization of medicine.”
Meredith, a former hospital CEO, said by codifying these protections for doctors to opt out of care, it’s actually “pro-patient.”
It’s not about denying care, it’s about finding a provider best suited to offer that care, he said, citing a hypothetical scenario in which a therapist refuses to provide counseling to a gay couple.
“Now think through that one: if your heart is really not supportive of providing that care to that gay couple, are you really doing what’s in the best interest of that gay couple?” Meredith said Friday. “You may go through the motions, but you’re not really going to give them comfort, good advice, you’re just going to sit and listen.
“Wouldn’t it be much better to say, ‘I’ve got an issue, I want to refer you to one of my colleagues.’ Wouldn’t that be the right course of action?”
The characterization that by allowing doctors to pick and choose which services they provide, it’s ultimately better for the patients they’re serving is one Alliance Defending Freedom’s Greg Chafuen shared, too.
Alliance Defending Freedom is a national conservative Christian legal and lobbying group that vows to fight for Christians who “are being punished for living by their convictions.”
“This is good for the health care profession as a whole: patients want to know their health care professionals are working with ethical integrity,” Chafuen, senior legal counsel for ADF, told the committee. “It provides more opportunity, more diversity for health care providers because patients can actually find somebody they agree with about their health care.”
Citing it as an example of what his bill seeks to protect, Douglas, a licensed anesthesiologist, told that same committee he morally objects to abortion, therefore he has refused to provide anesthesia to patients getting abortions. Under Senate Bill 132, he couldn’t be discriminated against for heeding his sincerely held belief.
Other than Douglas’ example, opponents said it’s unclear what type of care, specifically, Douglas is seeking to address with this bill, in part because its applicability is so sweeping.
Dr. Karen Abrams, a licensed pediatrician in Louisville, told the Senate committee earlier this week, the bill “puts the health and safety of Kentuckians at significant risk” and “increases barriers to care.”
Abrams said she worried the bill will bolster protections for doctors to refuse to practice evidence-based medicine in service of religious beliefs.
Under the bill, “a provider could refuse to prescribe birth control pills to prevent pregnancy,” Abrams said, sharing a story of when she was a medical student interning in rural Kentucky. Abrams said the provider she worked with “refused to discuss birth control with any patient because he didn’t condone premarital sex. These patients had no other access to care. This is simply unacceptable.”
Years later, another pharmacist refused to fill a Plan B prescription for one of her patients on similar religious grounds, she said. Under this bill, “this could happen all the time,” Abrams said.
“As a health care provider, I take an oath to care for all of my patients, putting their needs and well-being above all else,” she said. “Senate Bill 132 would undermine this fundamental principle.”
Democratic Sen. Karen Berg of Louisville, a licensed radiologist, made a similar point on the Senate floor Friday.
“The concern of our patients should come before us,” she said.
This story was originally published March 10, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
