The new Hypocrite's Oath for practicing medicine in Montana has moved one step closer to being the law of the State.
From LGBTQ Nation (citing the Montana Free Press):
Montana’s Republican-led state House has approved a so-called “medical conscience bill” that would allow medical providers to refuse services based on “ethical, moral, or religious beliefs or principles,” even in emergencies. The bill now requires a third House vote before proceeding to the state’s Republican-led Senate.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Amy Regier (R), has specifically said she authored it to allow medical professionals to refuse abortions, medical marijuana, physician-assisted euthanasia, and gender-affirming care for transgender people, all things that Regier called “lifestyle and elective procedures" ...
Regier promises that her bill, known as H.B. 303: Implement Medical Ethics and Diversity Act, would only apply to “narrow circumstances” and wouldn’t lead to large-scale discrimination against LGBTQ+ patients.
However, the bill’s text says that it would allow basically any individual involved in healthcare to refuse services. These individuals include any healthcare employees, doctors, nurses, aides, pharmacy workers, medical and mental health school members, lab techs, board members, insurers, other payers, “or any other person who facilitates or participates in a healthcare service.”
In short, this means that anyone involved in the chain of care could refuse to provide services for anyone or anything they object to. This means that any marginalized person will have to worry that any part of their care could be interrupted at any point by anybody, based on an undefined notion of “conscious.”
The bill says that objecting individuals cannot be disciplined for “engaging in speech or expressive activity protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution” unless a health department or board proves “beyond a reasonable doubt that the medical practitioner’s speech was the direct cause of physical harm to a person.”
Put another way, any medical-related worker could possibly express discriminated viewpoints to patients, and the groups that work with those workers couldn’t reprimand them for it without undergoing a long and arduous process.
I am tempted to focus here on the ability to refuse treatment as the most important part of this legislation. After all, if I work in the hospital pharmacy and conscientiously believe that certain types of people should have suffering inflicted upon them to warn them of God's impending damnation of their souls, I would have the right to refuse to fill a prescription for their pain medications. If I am a devout Catholic surgeon who believes that all forms of birth control are morally wrong, I can work in a public hospital and refuse to do vasectomies or tubal ligations because, you know, sterilization is wrong and my Hypocrite's Oath permits me to deny care.
But I don't honestly think that's the worst part of this legislation.
In a world where you can already refuse service to LGBTQIA+ people for virtually any reason, according to our Extreme Court, if this bill becomes law the guy who comes to take you to surgery on a stretcher will be free to tell you he thinks all queers/sluts/ragheads like you should burn in hell and he hopes you die ... and the hospital will NOT be able to discipline him for it unless he actually punches you.
Why is this worse than refusing treatment?
Simple: we are already in the land of refusing treatment thanks to the Extremes and the GOP at large. Those precedents have already been set that some forms of refusing treatment (even in publicly funded institutions) are acceptable, and our rearguard action is now confined to arguing about specific cases.
We lost the battle over refusing treatment, at least for this generation.
But Nurse Ratchet/Regier's bill opens an entirely new front. It used to be that your employer could set a standard for acceptable speech and behavior toward clients, customers, and patients, and enforce that. This bill specifically exempts hospitals and medical care facilities from exercising that authority ... as long as the person whispering in your ear, "I hope you die, faggot," does not actually touch the live wire ends of an electrical cord to you gonads.
Let's put this in perspective -- Florida (and soon Missouri) says that teachers can be found guilty of a felony for speaking even a single sentence about sexual orientation in a classroom ("Don't say 'Gay'") while Montana wants people to be immune from discipline at their work for calling Black people the N-word (Let's characterize this one as the "Say, 'Die, faggot, die'" bill).
What they are aiming for, literally, is a nation in which cake bakers can literally look at you when you come into their shop and say, "The law may or may not require me to serve you, but I want you to know that you are a sinful, hell-bound slut/queer/darkie/kike/raghead who deserves to burn for eternity."
Truth in advertising: I used to be a Libertarian. I was always vaguely uncomfortable with the party platform plank that said business owners should be able to refuse service "for any reason or no reason at all," but I never pushed back on that really hard because I agreed with so much else in Libertarianism.
Two decades later the Libertarian Party has been taken over by racist homophobes and I am complicit: I did not listen to my own conscience and denounce something that I knew was both un-American and morally long.
No more.
No more equivocation, no more Mr. Nice Guy, no more accepting things that need to be changed.
One of my friends of longest vintage said recently that with the relenting attacks on LGBTQIA+ Americans he was torn -- in his late 60s -- between "fighting back and rolling up into a ball."
I get that, I do. And what I've got left to fight with -- being in my late 60s myself -- is only my voice and my anger. And there will be days, weeks, and sometimes even months when it seems too hard and I am too tired.
But then I try to remember the words of William Lloyd Garrison in the very first issue of The Liberator:
"I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD."
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