The Doctor Will Not See You.

Can you imagine going to a doctor and being refused to be treated? Well in many Republican states that is true and it is perfectly legal to be refused treatment because you are LGBTQ+!

More than 1 in 8 LGBTQ people live in states where doctors can refuse to treat them
Advocates worry that the growing number of laws that expand religious rights for health care providers could be interpreted as a “license to discriminate.”
NBC News
By Jo Yurcaba
July 28, 2022


South Carolina became the seventh state last month to permit health care providers to decline to serve people if they feel doing so would violate their religious beliefs. 

As a result, more than 1 in 8 LGBTQ people now live in states where doctors, nurses and other health care professionals can legally refuse to treat them, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank. In addition to South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio and Illinois have similar measures in effect.

Picture this… you are driving down to Florida for the winter and as you are driving you get these chest pains that is radiating down one arms, you’re skin is getting clammy and you recognize the symptoms of a heart attack! You call 911 and the EMTs rush to save you but when they see you are trans and they refuse to treat you.

And it is all perfectly legal in South Carolina.

Advocates and legal experts say the laws will further raise the barriers to health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer patients. 

“We often are worried that the expansion of religious rights in these contexts will be taken as a license to discriminate,” said Jenny Pizer, the law and policy director for the LGBTQ legal advocacy group Lambda Legal.

[…]

South Carolina state Sen. Larry Grooms, who supported his state’s law, the Medical Ethics and Diversity Act, told NPR in June that “it’s based on procedure, not on patients.”

“This is America, where you should have the freedom to say no to something you don’t believe in,” he told NPR.

Although “religious freedom” or “conscience” measures, as they’re often called, don’t explicitly list LGBTQ people among those who may be refused treatment, advocates say that in practice they are affected disproportionately.

This is America where bigotry is allowed to kill.

A trans person died because EMTs refused to treat her.

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.

Now we have returned to that era when medical providers can refuse to treat us.

Thank you mister Republican because of your bigotry I am a second class citizen and subjected to your hatred.