Like your contraceptives? Better speak up before H.3408 passes.
South Carolina suffers the consequences of birth control not being available and affordable to all young people each year by losing out a reported $197 million yearly to support births to young mothers, according to the grassroots organization TellThemSC.org. The lost revenue could be spent on improving our school systems and reducing the homeless crisis, but instead we allow pharmacists to deny customers access to birth control they deem unworthy.
South Carolina House Bill 3408, the “Refusal of Care” bill, if passed, would allow anyone working in a health care setting to refuse care to a patient based on their personal beliefs. The language of this bill is so broad that it allows denial of services for any reason — even prejudice.
The bill would intensify our current struggles with young people trying to get services and contraceptives. Even in life-threatening situations, a health care provider could deny services to a person in need. We do not need a presidential candidate to allow us to ban birth control.
Some might not see this as an issue, but general care in hospitals could certainly slow down if nurses or doctors were given the choice to push patients off onto some other staff member.
You can demand that the state legislators back down by filling the room with the Students with a Responsible Message (SWARM) organization while they discuss the bill in subcommittee in just a couple of weeks.
To be notified of the meeting and to receive information about SWARM, contact the co-founders at soswarm@mailbox.sc.edu.
— Marc Aaron Guest, fourth-year anthropology student, and Sarah Durussel-Weston, public health graduate student