Can a healthcare provider deny care if his/her religious, moral or ethical beliefs conflict with the beliefs of the patient? 

In South Carolina, yes, now that the Medical Ethics and Diversity Act has been signed into law by Governor Henry McMaster. 

Doctors and other medical personnel, including medical students, in South Carolina can now legally deny non-emergency care to patients.

Supporters of the law contend that it protects clinicians from being forced to violate their conscience.

Critics say it’s a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people and others. 

“This is America, where you should have the freedom to say no to something you don’t believe in,” says South Carolina State Senator Larry Grooms, who sponsored the law.

The new law could affect services such as family planning, transgender patient needs, and medication prescriptions. It also allows insurance companies to deny claims or care. 

Community health program director for the LGBTQ rights group Campaign for Southern Equality, Ivy Hill, said, “It is absolutely targeting people.” 

Grooms denies the claim and says that, “It’s based on procedure, not on patients.”

Hill says the new law places more obstacles for LGBTQ people, where services are already hard to find in rural areas.

Alex Duvall, a Christian family physician in South Carolina, who supported the bill, said, “Anything that is considered immoral behavior I can’t condone or I can’t help them participate in it.” 

The new law protects him from a suit if he refuses, for example, to give gender-affirming hormone treatments.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in South Carolina says that the law is discriminatory and will be challenged in court, because discrimination due to sexual orientation and gender identity is prohibited under federal law. The ACLU is challenging a similar law in Ohio. Arkansas has a law just like it, signed by the governor in 2021. Other states are considering or already have conscience clauses.

Many physicians in South Carolina expressed their opposition to the bill. 

Dr. Elizabeth Mack, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, testified that health care should be based on science, not the clinician’s beliefs.

The Human Rights Campaign wrote that the law will affect medical care for all people in South Carolina, because it allows health care providers and insurance companies to deny care at the practitioner’s discretion. 

Conscience laws could be harmful to all patients, particularly LGBTQ individuals, women and rural citizens, because over 40% of available hospital beds are controlled by Catholic institutions in some states.

The Supreme Court said a bakery owner could refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage couple. Where do we, as a country, draw the line?