By Chelsey Seidel
Edited by Frankie Mansfield
Women's organizations say they're encouraged that a bill widening when medical providers can refuse treatment if it goes against their moral beliefs has been sent back down to an S.C Senate subcommittee.
The Senate Medical Affairs Committee deadlocked 7–7 Thursday on whether to send the "Freedom of Conscience" bill to the full Senate.
The bill would prohibit abortions from being covered under state employee health insurance or by private policies and would widen the protection to healthcare employees who choose not to participate in certain practices for moral or religious reasons.
Women's groups such as the League of Women Voters of the Columbia Area and the South Carolina Coalition for Healthy Families – who have been vocal in their opposition since the bill passed through the House last year ¬– have called it a "trash piece of legislation."
Elaine Faithful, program manager for the South Carolina Coalition for Healthy Families, said the bill's broad language gives healthcare providers the choice to deny a multitude of medical procedures based on their own conscience.
"This is a piece by piece process to dismantle access to all reproductive healthcare, and patient care is being sacrificed," Faithful said at a League of Women Voters luncheon after the committee deadlocked. "It's a complicated, messed up, trash piece of legislation."
S.C. law already gives a moral exemption regarding abortions.
The bill by Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester would add procedures, including in vitro fertilization, birth control prescriptions and end-of-life care.
Delleney said the bill would protect people from being hired, fired or denied admission to medical school because of their beliefs.
"In a time when the government seeks to regulate everything we do, especially health care, we need people who believe in the sanctity of life," Delleney said after the committee voted. "It's amazing to me that some Republicans voted against it. This is about a conscientious objector being protected from discrimination."
Delleney said he still hopes to get the bill passed by the time the legislative session end in June.
"It's very hard to get pro¬life bill out of the Senate," Delleney said. "I have no control, the House is a very pro-life body, and the Senate isn't."
Rita Paul, League of Women Voters president , said women's health should be important to all voters, not just women.
