COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 2, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Ohio on Thursday enacted a budget bill with provisions that protect healthcare providers from having to commit abortions, transgender surgeries, or other practices that violate their beliefs. A section in the bill, House Bill 110, states that medical professionals and healthcare institutions can refuse to perform services based on “moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or principles”:
Notwithstanding any conflicting provision of the Revised Code, a medical practitioner, health care institution, or health care payer has the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or principles held by the practitioner, institution, or payer.
“Exercise of the right of conscience is limited to conscience-based objections to a particular health care service,” HB 110 continues.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the budget yesterday after lawmakers approved it earlier this week. DeWine, who has previously issued pro-LGBT executive orders, did not use his line-item veto to remove the medical conscience protections. He said that the clause was “not a problem.”
“In the real world, most of those rights are not only recognized and exercised by medical professionals, but they’re being accepted by other medical professionals,” the governor said, according to cleveland.com. “That is the way the world generally works. This is basically put in statute and codified.”
“Let’s say the doctor is against abortion,” he continued. “If the doctor is not doing abortions, if there’s other things that maybe a doctor has a conscience problem with, it’s worked out. Somebody else does those things. This is not a problem, has not been a problem in the state of Ohio and I do not expect it to be a problem.”
Pro-life groups celebrated HB 110, the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV) calling it “a significant step … to protect religious freedom.”
“Medical professionals face unbelievable pressure today to abandon their faith and ethical beliefs and to perform procedures they believe are harmful and dangerous,” the group said in a press release shortly after the law was signed. “Make no mistake, the politically correct and woke culture that is bullying and silencing millions of Americans today is ingrained deeply into Ohio’s medical system.”
With the enactment of HB 110, “life-saving men and women of faith across the state can know they cannot be fired or punished for ethically treating their patients,” CCV said.
Other provisions in the budget bill, which took effect on Thursday, include millions of dollars in funding for police and a ban on election officials accepting private grant money, cleveland.com said.
Hungary recently took a major step to protect children from having their innocence destroyed and being sexualized by LGBT propaganda in schools and by pornography in the mass media.
Please SIGN and SHARE this petition which expresses agreement and respect for the wishes of the sovereign nation of Hungary to protect its children against the onslaught of LGBT indoctrination propaganda and pornography.
Since passage of the bill the fake news outlets from Europe to America have predictably begun to fabricate outrage and, or, simply lie about the contents of the bill. And, the corrupt European Union has also now started to attack Hungary's efforts to protect children.
For doing the hard and good thing, Hungary now needs our support.
The bill, which was passed last week, specifically prohibits showing pornographic material or content portraying homosexuality or transgenderism to minors under the age of 18. Other measures include a registry of sex offenders, regulations on sexual education, and stronger policies against child pornography.
This policy is to be welcomed as a pro-active measure against the liberal and LGBT propaganda machine which is steadily encroaching on Hungary's borders, and which threatens to tear down Christian civilization altogether.
Indeed, the same week that this law was passed in Hungary, Vienna's (Austria) deputy mayor distributed "Rainbow Family" information boxes to 350 kindergartens in the Austrian capital. And, Vienna is only about 50 miles from the Hungarian border!
But, never satisfied with corrupting the children of their own countries, LGBT activists and their accomplices in the EU have been quick to castigate Hungary, claiming that the Budapest government has "discriminated" against homosexuals with their law to protect children, and in doing so, has violated EU law.
However, Hungary's Justice Minister, Judit Varga, set the record straight in an interview with Hungarian journalists, stating:
"This is one of a number of declarations declaring certain Hungarian measures to be contrary to EU law without a thorough examination. The fake news that has taken wing in these statements is completely unfounded.
In Hungary's view, the legislation has nothing to do with EU law. The issue of subsidiarity and constitutional, national identity is a matter for the Member States. Furthermore, the European Charter of Human Rights also says that a parent has the right to determine the direction of their children's development in a culturally traditional background."
And, more broadly, Viktor Orbán, Hungary's Prime Minister, had this to say about Hungary's new law:
"The current left-wing campaign against Hungary is further proof that today, the left is the enemy of freedom, because instead of freedom of speech, they want political correctness as defined by them, and hegemony of opinion instead of a pluralism of ideas.
The new Hungarian law does not conflict with any lofty ideals or European laws. The new Hungarian law simply states clearly that only parents can decide on the sexual education of their children. Education in schools must not be in conflict with the will of parents; it must at most be supplementary, its form and content must be clearly defined and it must be subject to parental consent.
Parents also rightly expect that on platforms used by our children, pornography, sexuality for its own sake, homosexuality and gender reassignment programs should not be available. These restrictions must also be defined with surgical precision. In Hungary, no one has a say in how adults live their lives. In our view, a free adult should not have to give an account of his life in front of any secular authority — only before God when the time comes."
Please SIGN and SHARE this urgent petition which supports the government of Hungary in their passage of this pro-active child protection measure banning LGBT propaganda and pornography for under-18s.
Thank you!
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Hungary passes law against homosexuality, prime minister renews vow to ‘protect our children’' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/hungary-passes-law-against-homosexuality-prime-minister-renews-vow-to-protect-our-children
'Hungary bans promotion of homosexuality, transgenderism to minors' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/hungary-bans-promotion-of-homosexuality-transgenderism-to-minors
'EU to take legal action against Hungary’s anti-pedophilia bill' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/eu-to-take-legal-action-against-hungarys-anti-pedophilia-bill
Photo Credit: okoscso / Shutterstock.com
Gov. DeWine nevertheless vetoed a section that would have refunded around $100,000 in fines for businesses that broke COVID-19 restrictions. The governor has been criticized by fellow Republicans for his harsh lockdown and masking policies throughout the coronavirus crisis, which led lawmakers to restrict his emergency powers earlier this year.
Ohio’s move to strengthen conscience rights comes amid multiple attempts by the Biden administration to force healthcare providers to offer physically mutilating, scientifically discredited surgeries to transgender-identifying individuals. The Buckeye State, however, still lags behind several other Republican-led states that have enacted recent laws to protect female athletes from competition against gender-confused biological males.
Though the Ohio House passed a measure last week to uphold sex-based sports, attaching it to a college athletics bill, DeWine signed an executive order on Monday without the gender policy, bypassing the House bill, which he indicated he would veto. DeWine, who says that he is a Catholic, is up for re-election in 2022.