Category: Euthanasia

The caricature of the conscientiously objecting physician

Objecting doctors are the bad guys, obstructing care.

How will disciplining conscientious doctors or driving them from the profession improve health care?

Physicians’ Alliance Against Euthanasia

Catherine Ferrier

Weary physicianCanadian doctors who object to directly causing the death of their patients, once the near-totality of the profession, have since the enactment of laws permitting “medical assistance in dying” suddenly become outliers. Polling data is unclear, polls are often biased, and there is no doubt that the euthanasia lobby had the ear of media, opinion leaders and politicians long before we knew what they were up to. Be that as it may, we are now told that euthanasia/MAiD is an accepted ‘medical treatment’ that must be provided to those who request it. Many provincial medical colleges, though not requiring doctors to euthanize patients themselves, do expect, to different degrees, that we facilitate their being euthanized by someone else. . . [Full text]

Death by organ donation: Euthanizing patients for their organs gains frightening traction

Organ donation is a selfless gift to those on transplant wait lists.

But what if we euthanized patients by harvesting their organs?

USA Today

E. Wesley Eli

How should society respond to the increasingly long list of people waiting for organs on a transplant list? You’ve no doubt heard of “black market” organs in foreign countries, but are there other options that should be off the table? 

If you were on a transplant list, would it matter to you if the organ was obtained from a living person who died because of the donation procedure itself? What if she had volunteered? 

Your thoughts on this topic have implications beyond the issue of transplantation.

As the former co-director of Vanderbilt University’s lung transplant program and a practicing intensive care unit physician, I see organ donation an selfless gift to those approaching death on transplant wait lists. 

However, I’m wrestling with the emerging collision between the worlds of transplantation and euthanasia. . . [Full text]

Canada’s bishops allow Catholic hospitals to host consultations for euthanasia

LifeSite News

Lianne Laurence

OTTAWA, April 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Canada’s bishops were consulted on and agreed to secret guidelines by Catholic health sponsors that allow third-party euthanasia assessments of medically frail patients in Catholic health care facilities, LifeSiteNews has learned.

And while the Catholic health sponsors who drafted the guidelines in collaboration with ethicists and bishops concluded such assessments were not formal cooperation with evil, they failed to consider there are instances when material cooperation is gravely wrong, as is the case here, says Catholic moral theologian, Dr. E. Christian Brugger. . . [Full text]

Canadian protection of conscience bill progresses

David Anderson, M.P.

Two years ago, taking a patient’s life was culpable homicide. Although the law now permits physician assisted suicide, many doctors’ consciences will not. The Supreme Court of Canada has explicitly said that the legalization of euthanasia did not entail a duty of physicians to provide it.

However, regional associations have introduced regulations compelling conscientiously objecting physicians to provide effective referrals for physician assisted suicide, contravening this assurance. This happens, without any penalty.

I believe it’s time to stand up for doctors and health care providers who aren’t willing to leave their core ethics behind when they’re at a patient’s bedside. The protection of conscience rights for medical professionals is part of protecting the fundamental freedom of conscience and religion guaranteed to all Canadians in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Bill C-418 amends the Criminal Code to make it an offence to intimidate a medical practitioner, nurse practitioner, pharmacist or any other health care professional for compelling them to take part, directly or indirectly, in the provision of medical assistance in dying.

It also makes it an offence to dismiss from employment or to refuse to employ a medical practitioner, nurse practitioner, pharmacist or any other health care professional for the reason only that they refuse to take part, directly or indirectly, in the provision of medical assistance in dying.

I expect Bill C-418 will be debated on May 29, 2019.

Click below to view and download materials to spread the word about C-418 and build support for this important legislation:

Click here to download a copy of C-418 (EN/FR)

Click here to download an informational graphic on C-418 with tear-away letter to the Minister of Justice | Français

Click here to download a letter on C-418 which can be sent to your local Member of Parliament | Français

Click here to download a petition on C-418 | Français


No agreement and disappointment after lengthy End of Life Choice bill hearing

Stuff

Ruby Macandrew and Thomas Manch

It took 16 months, almost 40,000 submissions, and a nationwide tour of 14 cities.

The result was a report that found no agreement on whether the End of Life Choice Bill should be passed, made no substantive recommendations, drew few conclusions and disappointed those on both sides of a hard-fought debate.

Both advocates and opponents of the bill – which seeks to legalise voluntary euthanasia – have resumed their default positions for a familiar battle that will span months to come.

The report, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, did not address any contentious aspects of the prospective law, with the eight Justice Select Committee MPs declining to “consider substantive policy issues on a conscience bill”. . . [Full text]