LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A new bill for Kentucky would allow health care providers to refuse providing patients treatment that violates their conscience.
Senate Bill 90 was introduced by Leitchfield Republican Senator Stephen Meredith.
Jeremy McFarland is a transgender man and the office manager at Fairness Campaign. Even before the bill was introduced, McFarland said some health care centers in the bluegrass state were already denying services.
"When I was really young I was having to go alone all the time to other cities to try to find therapists who would take me as a patient," McFarland said.
He shared his story on the Senate floor last week.
"Once my name was changed I think the pharmacist realized that I was transgender and why I was taking the prescriptions I was, so he would no longer fill that prescription," he said sharing a memory from his teenage years.
Advocates of SB 90 said it is not meant to attack the patient.
"It has nothing to do with your identity or any part of the patient it's simply the nature of the procedure that's being performed," senior policy analyst of Family Foundation of Kentucky, Martin Cothran said. "We're seeing more innovations in medical treatments and scientific experimentation."
The law would apply to insurance companies, and public or private hospitals and clinics. Lawmakers said it is to help eliminate discrimination against medical care providers who decline to perform procedures that violate their conscience such as their religious, moral and philosophical beliefs.
"I think this is a reality for trans people already, but I think that this bill really runs the risk of creating issues for everyone," McFarland said the bill is too vague. "I could be getting flu medications from the pharmacy, but if that pharmacy technician knows that I'm transgender they can deny me service."
"Doctors need some kind of protection to make sure they're not required to do things that they consider unethical," Cothran said.
SB 90 will now go to the Senate for further action.
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