The governor of the US state of Idaho has signed a law which will create conscience rights for health care professionals in specific areas of medical practice.

The measure, passed by Idaho Governor Butch Otter ensures that pro-life health care workers can refuse to dispense drugs that could be used to cause abortions or euthanasia.

David Ripley, a spokesperson for Idaho Choose Life said the bill represented “a huge pro-Life victory”

“After some two years’ worth of work, Idaho joins a handful of other states with comprehensive conscience protections for health care professionals. It couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment,” Ripley added.

“With the federal government now busily erecting hundreds of new agencies with which to invade our hospitals, clinics and insurance providers’ offices – this new law may well prove vital to protecting the integrity of our vital health care professions. We are confident that it will also help protect the very lives of vulnerable Idahoans,” he said.

ICL worked closely with Americans United for Life on the law and AUL attorney Denise Burke talked about its importance.

“Idaho has become the third state to provide comprehensive protection for health care freedom of conscience,” she said.

The new law protects any licensed health care professional from being required to participate in “any health care service that violates his or her conscience.”

“Health care service” is specifically defined to include “abortion, dispensation of an abortifacient drug, human embryonic stem cell research, treatment regimens utilizing human embryonic stem cells, human embryo cloning or end of life treatment or care.”

“A health care professional declining to participate in these services may not be discriminated against or held liable for exercising his or her conscience,” Burke says.

Louisiana and Mississippi also currently provide comprehensive protection for health care freedom of conscience.

Forty-four other states provide a lesser degree of conscience protection – generally, providing protection to limited categories of providers (e.g. physicians and nurses) and only for limited “services” (typically, abortion).

And Burke said three states – Alabama, New Hampshire, and Vermont – provide no conscience protection for health care providers.

“Freedom of conscience – a right to conscientiously object – must be a comprehensive civil right for any health care provider to decline to participate in any health care procedure or service based on religious, moral, or ethical convictions. All individuals, including health care providers, have a fundamental right to exercise their religious beliefs, personal ethics, and conscience,” she said.