NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia (“NPCVA”) urges the Board of Medicine (“the Board”) to adopt the draft regulations for the licensure of genetic counselors in the Commonwealth.

At NPCVA, we believe that medical evidence should guide the Board in drafting regulations that promote the health and safety of all Virginians. After numerous meetings, in-depth discussion, and careful consideration of public comment from physicians, individuals, and advocacy organizations, the Advisory Board on Genetic Counseling unanimously approved the draft regulations for the licensure of genetic counselors on December 16, 2015. The Board subsequently unanimously approved the draft regulations at its February 18, 2016 meeting. The draft regulations have since been certified by the Office of the Attorney General and approved by the Governor’s office. We encourage the Board to approve the draft regulations for final adoption to promote the health, safety, and wellbeing of all Virginians.

In particular, NPCVA encourages the Board to approve Section 150(B) (“Exercise of the conscience clause”) of the draft regulations for final adoption. The so-called conscience clause that appears in the enabling statute for the licensure of genetic counselors operates not at all as a matter of conscience, but as a blanket license to discriminate. The “conscience clause” enables genetic counselors to discriminate against, and even harm, clients with total impunity. The “conscience clause” enables state-licensed genetic counselors, based on the genetic information provided to the counselor, to deny counseling to any patient simply because the counselor knows or believes that: the patient is lesbian, gay, or transgender; subscribes to a certain religious faith; is unmarried and pregnant; or the person may want to take an action with which the counselor does not personally agree, as some examples. The statute is so extreme that it will shield a genetic counselor from damages even if the counselor takes purposeful action based on his or her personal beliefs that results in actual physical harm or death to the patient.

While the regulations for the licensure of genetic counselors cannot supplant, contradict, or supersede the enabling statute, they can at the very least provide much-needed protection for the health and safety of all Virginians who seek genetic counseling services. No genetic counseling client should be subjected to substandard, harmful, misleading, inaccurate, or incomplete care based on a genetic counselor’s deeply held moral or religious beliefs. Rather, all genetic counseling clients, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, religion, or viewpoint on abortion, should expect to receive, and should receive, the highest level of care from his or her genetic counselor. Clients should not be punished for their genetic counselors’ refusal to provide medically accurate, complete, high-quality care. Where a genetic counselor cannot provide medically accurate or complete care to his or her patients because of his or her religious or moral beliefs, a client, at the very least, should be informed of the counselor’s limitations, and should be afforded the opportunity to seek a counselor who can provide complete, accurate, high-quality health care.

The draft regulations seek to promote, as much as is possible given the incredibly harmful enabling statute, the health and well-being of all Virginians. Accordingly, the Board of Medicine should adopt the regulations as drafted by the Advisory Board on Genetic Counseling, and as unanimously approved by the full Board of Medicine on February 18, 2016.