Several states already have laws that broadly protect the rights of clinicians and institutions to refuse participation in healthcare that they find objectionable. These states include: Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, and South Carolina. In addition, most states offer CBO rights for specific services like MAID, abortion, and withdrawing LST.
Broad CBO legislation has just been introduced in Texas. The bill finds that without comprehensive protections, the conscience of health care providers may be violated. Accordingly, the Health and Safety Code would be amended to add a new subchapter.
The law would permit a person to "decline to participate in a health care service for reasons of conscience." But the law would not allow the person to decline participating in emergency care, life-sustaining treatment, or CPR.
The new law would apply to almost all types of clinicians and all types of facilities. It would apply to "health care service" which means any phase of patient health care or treatment, including "examination, testing, diagnosis, referral, prognosis, dispensing or administering a drug or device, ancillary research, instruction, therapy, treatment, and preparing for or performing a surgery or procedure."
The law further provides that "A physician or health care provider may not be held civilly or criminally liable because the physician or health care provider declines to participate in a health care service wholly or partly for reasons of conscience in accordance with Section 161.752."
Notably, "conscience" means a "sincerely held set of moral convictions arising from: (A) a belief in and relation to God; (B) a religious faith or spiritual practice; or (C) a moral philosophy or ethical position, without regard to whether the philosophy or position is related to a religious faith."
No comments:
Post a Comment