Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
Dutch News
A special clinic set up to help people whose doctors do not support euthanasia has been reprimanded for failings when it helped an elderly woman who did not want to live in a nursing home to die. The euthanasia monitoring committee said the clinic’s experts had failed to exercise proper care when carrying out their duties. [Full text]
Canada.com
Doctor-hastened death would only be appropriate after all other reasonable choices have been exhausted, says the head of the country’s largest doctors’ group.
Dr. Chris Simpson, newly installed president of the Canadian Medical Association, made the comments in advance of a landmark Supreme Court of Canada hearing expected to add fuel to the emotional end-of-life debate gaining urgency across Canada.
Simpson said there are enough doctors in Canada willing to perform doctor-hastened death, if the federal ban outlawing euthanasia were lifted.
But doctors first need safeguards to protect the vulnerable and a strategy to urgently shore up palliative care “so that this is not seen as a first, or second or even third choice, but a choice that’s appropriate for people after all other reasonable options are exhausted,” he said. [Full text]
Two days after it was passed at an Annual General Meeting of the Canadian Medical Association, the CMA Board of Directors approved the following motion:
Canadian Medical Association Journal
All doctors have the right to follow their conscience when deciding whether to assist dying patients physically or to provide them with the means to end their lives – within the bounds of legislation, delegates to the Canadian Medical Association’s annual meeting have voted.
As Canada considers changing its laws concerning assisted death, Canada’s doctors considered their stance on the second day of the Canadian Medical Association’s (CMA) 147th annual meeting in Ottawa. In the end, they voted 91% in favour of allowing individual physicians to follow their conscience in deciding whether or not to provide assistance. . . [Full Text]
Toronto Sun
OTTAWA – In what appears to be a softening on the issue from Canada’s doctors, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) voted Tuesday to allow doctors to follow their conscience if and when assisted suicide becomes legal in Canada.
Previously, the CMA had opposed the idea of medically assisted euthanasia.
But with recent end-of-life legislation in Quebec, as well as two related bills put forward by Steven Fletcher, a Conservative MP who was paralyzed after a car accident in 1996, Canadians’ views — as well as the country’s laws — could be changing. . . [Full Text]