Healthcare Sharing Ministries / Right of Conscience
Healthcare refusal and conscience legislation that lets providers, institutions, and insurers decline to provide or cover services on conscience or religious grounds. Long-tail risk for LGBTQ+ patients and any group whose care can be flagged as conscience-objectionable.
What It Does
Allows healthcare providers, hospitals, pharmacists, and insurance carriers to refuse to participate in or pay for services that conflict with stated conscience or religious beliefs. Pairs broad conscience protections with a healthcare sharing ministry framework that operates outside standard insurance regulation.
Conscience and religious-refusal carve-outs of this scope have historically been written without strong emergency-care or referral safeguards, which is the legal feature that creates the broadest harm.
Why It Matters
HB 112 builds a legal pathway for hospitals, clinics, pharmacists, and insurance plans to deny services to LGBTQ+ Ohioans and other patients.
- Enables refusal of gender-affirming care, fertility care, HIV prevention medication, and routine LGBTQ+ patient care.
- Disproportionately affects rural Ohioans whose nearest provider may be the only viable option.
- Echoes 134th GA HB 110 medical conscience provisions, building on a legislative pattern.
- Combined with HB 838's coverage attack, creates a healthcare environment where care is both unfunded and unavailable.
Timeline
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Feb 18, 2025
Introduced in HouseBill introduced by Rep. Gross.
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Feb 26, 2025
Referred to House JudiciaryAssigned to House Judiciary Committee. No hearings or report-out identified as of May 7, 2026.
Official Sources
Track the bill directly through Ohio Legislature pages.