Picture This…

You are driving through a strange town in a different state where you have never been before when a truck runs a red light and slams into you. You are in great pain, fading in and out of consciousness, you don’t remember much… just vague voices and faces. Something with sirens, you must be in an ambulance. Doors… people leaning over you poking and prodding you asking if it hurts.

Then you hear… “We don’t treat those people here, we are a religious hospital!”

Then sirens again, and that’s the last thing you hear.

Don’t think that could happen?

Well guess again.

Pediatrician refuses to treat baby with lesbian parents and there’s nothing illegal about it
The Washington Post
By Abby Phillip
February 19, 2015


A Michigan pediatrician declined to treat the infant daughter of a lesbian couple in yet another example of the growing tensions between advocates for LGBT rights and those who want greater religious expression protections.
[…]
In a handwritten letter to the couple months later, their would-be doctor Vesna Roi explained what happened.
“After much prayer following your prenatal, I felt that i would not be able to develop the personal patient-doctor relationships that I normally do with my patients,” Roi wrote in her letter on Feb. 9. “I felt that it was an exciting time for the two of you and I felt that if I came in and shared my decision it would take away much of the excitement. That was my mistake. I should not have made that assumption and I apologize for that.”

With more “religious freedom” laws being passed we are going to see this more often.

Ohio may let doctors refuse to give medical service if it violates their religious beliefs
The Columbus Dispatch
By Titus Wu and Jessie Balmert
June 14, 2021


Ohio physicians, hospitals and health insurance companies could refuse to provide or pay for a medical service if it violates their moral beliefs, under language inserted into the state budget bill this week.

The new language would also give medical practitioners immunity from lawsuits for refusing such and allow them to sue others.

Abortion rights and LGBTQ advocates sounded the alarm this week, fearing more restricted access to reproductive health care and more discrimination. Those on the other side hailed the measure as essential for protecting religious freedoms.

The former lambasted lawmakers for inserting the clause last-minute into the state's humongous two-year budget bill, where it received no public hearings and could get lost in the public's eye amid a litany of other things.

But Ohio isn’t the only state…

By the End of Summer, Arkansas Doctors Can Refuse to Treat LGBTQ Patients
The governor signed a bill granting doctors and medical professionals the right to refuse medically necessary treatment to patients based on moral, ethical or religious grounds
Rolling Stone
By Peter Wad
March 26, 2021


If you are gay or trans in Arkansas, getting medical treatment may become much more difficult. Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson signed into law on Friday a bill giving medical providers discretion to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients and others based on religious, moral, or ethical objections.

The law, also known as the Medical Ethics and Diversity Act, states that even when a procedure is medically necessary, a provider can still refuse treatment, except in emergency situations. It is scheduled to go into effect late this summer, even as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on.

What it is doing to us is horrendous, children are living in fear.

'Keeps me up at night': Doctors who care for transgender minors brace for bans
“I worry about what might happen to my patients if these bills are passed and worry about going to jail myself.”
NBC News
By Jo Yurcaba
May 27, 2021


Dr. Stephanie Ho, a family medicine physician in Fayetteville, Arkansas, said she’s had state legislators in her exam room before.

Ho, who has provided gender-affirming care to transgender people in the state since 2015, is also an abortion provider, so she is familiar with lawmakers' restricting the care she provides. She said she wasn’t surprised when the Legislature overrode Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto of a bill last month that would ban puberty blockers, hormones and surgery for transgender minors.

“I think that it's kind of ridiculous that we've gotten to the point that we're letting politicians dictate how health care is delivered and what kind of care can be given to whom,” said Ho, a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health.

Those who have money can get health care in another state, but those who can’t suffer and for the trans children who are already in treatment…

Lowell [Lowell is licensed and practices in 10 states via telemedicine.] said forcing people who were assigned female at birth to stop testosterone would cause them to suffer symptoms of low testosterone, which include inability to concentrate and low energy. “They would start doing badly in school most likely, until their bodies started producing estrogen a few months later, and then they would restart their periods, restart breast growth, and it would undo all of the changes that we tried to achieve with testosterone.”

If people assigned male at birth were forced to stop taking estrogen, it “would be like going through instantaneous menopause,” Lowell said. For about a year, they could have symptoms like hot flashes, night sweats, irritability and mood swings, among other issues, such as negative impacts on emotional well-being.

We must never forget Tyra Hunter...

On August 7, 1995, Tyra Hunter, a transgender woman, died after a car accident in Washington, D.C. Hunter’s medical report predicted that she would have had an 86 percent chance of surviving the crash with proper care. Instead, the EMT shouted racist and transphobic epithets and refused to treat her. She died later that day, after being denied adequate care—first by the EMTs and then by the hospital.

You know what? The Republicans don’t care if we live or die. We mean nothing to them except for getting votes and campaign donations. That is all we are to them a political wedge to be pounded until we split.