“Conscience Laws” Too Often Defeated by Reverse Discrimination

     On April 24th this year Tennessee governor Bill Lee signed into law the Medical Ethics Defense Act, also know as the “Conscience Law”. It allows medical practitioners, healthcare institutions, and healthcare payers to refuse to participate in any medical procedure that violates their conscience, morals, or religious beliefs,

     The bill passed the Tennessee senate overwhelmingly (27 for, 3 against), but the Tennessee House of Representatives were not quite so sure if the bill was a good idea (71 for, 24 against).

     Many states have medical “conscience laws” of some sort, but often they only apply specifically to abortion. Nine states, along with Tennessee now, have conscience laws that can be applied more broadly to “general service” medical procedures, rather than just to abortion issues.

     Those 24 Tennessee Representatives who opposed the 2025 Conscience Law probably objected to it for the same two reasons most states have not passed similar, broader medical conscience laws. Objectors to the law proposals claim the bill could limit those in more rural areas from having access to healthcare, if their local provider elected not to perform certain procedures, like electroconvulsive therapy, for instance. The other worry is that the law could be used to discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals by denying them certain medical procedures.

     There is a practical nature to the first objection. However, the denial of medical service based on moral, ethical, or religious grounds is most likely to be applied by individual healthcare practitioners, not large healthcare institutions such as rural hospitals.

     The second objection suggests an agenda that is itself unethical. If a medical practitioner has enough evidence that a procedure is too harmful to a patient to be used, wouldn’t voting to not pass this law discriminate even more against the LGBTQ+ community by not protecting them from the dangers of a harmful medical procedure?

     “Cutting off your nose to spite your face” should be one of those medical procedures that an ethical person would refuse to perform by voting against a conscience bill. Otherwise, the LGBTQ+ community would not be fully protected from those same medical harms the rest of us are now protected from by these conscience laws.