EDMONTON—United Conservative MLAs have voted in favour of moving debate forward on a private member’s bill that seeks to affirm conscience rights for Alberta physicians who refuse to provide procedures like abortion or assisted dying due to their personal or religious beliefs.

Peace River UCP backbencher Dan Williams tabled Bill 207, the Conscience Rights (Health Care Providers) Protection Act, in the legislature Thursday afternoon. About three quarters of the United Conservatives’ members voted in favour of moving the bill forward to second reading. Some left the chamber after question period.

In a news release, Williams said his bill seeks to support existing policies under Alberta’s regulatory health care bodies, which give physicians the ability to refuse to provide service on the basis of their personal beliefs.

“Health care providers should never have to choose between their most deeply held beliefs and their job,” Williams said. He added the bill is merely focusing on reaffirming existing rights under the Charter, and will “in no way limit access to health care services in the province.”

Williams didn’t speak to reporters about his bill on Thursday.

The tabling of the bill comes after Premier Jason Kenney said during campaign period earlier this year that his caucus will not be legislating on abortion if elected, despite him being anti-abortion himself. Kenney was not present during the vote on the bill’s first reading.

Existing ethics codes for physicians and pharmacists in Alberta already acknowledge the conscience rights of health care workers, but also require doctors to refer their patients to another provider if they choose to refuse them care for personal or moral reasons.

In the release, Williams also said his bill is a response to an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling, which found that physicians who object to providing services based on moral concerns must offer their patients an “effective referral” to someone who can.

What happens next?

Now that the bill has been tabled, it’s before the legislature and could see further debate there or possibly get kicked over to a committee for further analysis. This doesn’t mean the bill is law or will even become law.

It’s also a private member’s bill, meaning it wasn’t introduced by a government minister. Generally speaking, private member’s bills don’t always have the full backing of the government, although some governments have been criticized in the past for using them to pass controversial legislation.

What’s the opposition saying?

Critics of the bill, including members of the Alberta NDP opposition, have raised alarms that it may lead to discrimination of LGBTQ patients, and may make it harder for people in rural and northern Alberta communities to get an abortion.

“It certainly has a lot of dog whistles in the notice of motion,” Sarah Hoffman, NDP MLA for Edmonton-Glenora, said of the bill after it appeared on the order paper Wednesday.

“I’m concerned that this is signalling a rollback on the rights that women have fought so hard for,” she added.

The NDP all voted against the bill on Thursday, but were defeated by the majority of UCP members.

Pro-choice activists say they are concerned, here’s why:

Joyce Arthur, executive director of Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, said the proposed legislation raises a number of alarms.

First, the bill does not specify what types of health care services would fall under its umbrella, whether it be abortion, assisted dying, health care specific to LGBTQ people, contraception, or all of the above. This means it could apply to any kind of health care, Arthur said.

She added the bill includes “formal or informal referral” under its definition of a health care service, meaning it would trump existing codes of ethics that require physicians to provide a referral to a patient if they cannot perform a procedure based on moral obligations.

This is done in contradiction to the outlined purpose of the bill, which states that “nothing in this Act derogates from a health care provider’s ... obligations to their patients, which may include informing individuals of options in respect of receiving a health care service.”

Lastly, the bill asks regulatory bodies of physicians to dismiss complaints from patients who have been affected by a refusal of a health care service from their doctor or nurse. Under this law, Arthur said, the rights of patients are overruled by the rights of their doctors, and patients will have no way to voice their concerns.

“It protects objectors from any kind of reprisals,” Arthur said. “They can refuse care and no one can do anything about it.”

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Overall, she said there is cause for concern that this bill will impact patients and access to health care in Alberta if it were to be passed.

“(The bill) does have serious effects, and it will embolden anti-choice or socially conservative health care professionals to give even more refusals of service, because they’ll feel more confident,” Arthur said.

What could this mean politically for Kenney and the Conservatives?

Lori Williams, a policy studies professor at Mount Royal University, said the legislation would be significant politically for two reasons:

First, it may be in direct contradiction to Kenney’s campaign promise that his government would not pass legislation on abortion or contentious social issues. Second, the debate around the bill will reflect the party’s stance on controversial issues that may garner them considerable backlash.

“It will be a significant signal of both the government’s willingness to follow election promises and commitments, and of its willingness to tackle or take on controversy.”

Williams said the bill is also likely a nod to social conservative voters, some of whom vocally backed candidates anti-choice candidates like Dan Williams during the election earlier this year. “It’s almost a statement of principle.”

And while Bill 207 is a provincial matter, she said the political impacts will likely be felt more by the federal Conservatives, who suffered in the Oct. 21 election in part because of leader Andrew Scheer’s unwillingness to address some of his socially conservative beliefs about gay marriage and abortion.

“In that respect, it would be a risk for the government to bring something like this forward,” she said.

This has come up in the past

The United Conservatives have faced questions about the party’s socially conservative members in the past, and as recently as early October, rumours swirled around a private members bill dealing with abortion access. At the time, the government’s house leader, Jason Nixon, said he hadn’t heard of any private members’ business being drawn up to deal with abortion.

But even before the provincial election in April, the UCP regularly faced questions from reporters and on social media about their candidates who had socially conservative views around gay marriage, abortion and LGBTQ issues.

In February, Star Edmonton revealed that RightNow, another anti-abortion group, and The Wilberforce Project, had quietly been supporting UCP election candidates that shared their views. In December 2018, RightNow boasted they’d helped “nominate over 25 pro-life candidates thus far.”

It’s unclear how many candidates who hold anti-abortion views currently sit in the legislature as elected members, but the UCP won 63 of the 87 seats in the last election and the NDP, who by all measures are a pro-choice party, elected 24.

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