Category: Publications

Protection of Conscience Project publications

Physician freedom of conscience in Alberta

Sean Murphy*

Alberta has been identified by freedom of conscience advocates as providing a satisfactory model of accommodation that should be imitated across the country. In late 2019 the head of the Alberta Medical Association and sponsor of a controversial protection of conscience bill in the Alberta legislature agreed that existing protections were “appropriate and effective.” On the other hand, it has been reported that Alberta physicians are obliged to refer for morally contested services, including assisted suicide, which would be unacceptable to many objecting practitioners. The dissonant evaluations reflect differences between actual practice and two College policies that take different approaches to freedom of conscience…[Full text]

Physician freedom of conscience in Manitoba

Sean Murphy*

The MAiD Act

Manitoba is the only Canadian province with a stand-alone statute that protects health care professionals who refuse to provide services: the Medical Assistance in Dying (Protection for Health Professionals and Others) Act (MAiD Act).1

The MAiD Act is a procedure-specific law applying only to euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS). It protects all regulated professionals who refuse to provide or “aid in the provision” of the procedures from professional disciplinary proceedings and adverse employment consequences because they have refused. They remain liable for other misconduct in relation to the refusal.

The Act protects those who refuse for any reason; refusal need not be based on any specific ground. Hence, it equally protects refusal for reasons of personal discomfort, distaste or fear and refusal based on moral or ethical objections. . . [Full text].

Medicine, morality and humanity

Sean Murphy*

Medicine is a moral enterprise.

Medicine, morality and humanityThe practice of medicine is an inescapably moral enterprise precisely because physicians are always seeking to do some kind of good and avoid some kind of evil for their patients. However, the moral aspect of practice as it relates to the conduct and moral responsibility of a physician is usually implicit, not explicit. It is normally eclipsed by the needs of the patient and exigencies of practice. But it is never absent; every decision concerning treatment is a moral decision, whether or not the physician specifically adverts to that fact.

This point is frequently overlooked when a physician, for reasons of conscience, declines to participate in or provide a service or procedure that is routinely provided by his colleagues. They may be disturbed because they assume that, in making a moral decision about treatment, he has done something unusual, even improper. Seeing nothing wrong with the procedure, they see no moral judgement involved in providing it. In their view, the objector has brought morality into a situation where it doesn’t belong, and, worse, it is his morality. . .  [Full Text]

To kill — or not to kill? That is the question.

An answer for a Dying With Dignity clinical advisor

Sean Murphy*

I just can’t understand why as learned as you are, you tenaciously use the verb KILL to refer to MAD. You cannot ignore that this verb requires a non-consenting victim. It makes of you a malicious pro-lifer who does not mind lying. MAD must be requested ! Camus wrote: «To misname things amount to adding to the world’s misery»…in La Pléiade, Oeuvres complètes p. 908.

This message was left for the Project Administrator by a member of the Clinicians’ Advisory Council of Dying With Dignity (DWD) Canada after he/she had downloaded several papers from the Administrator’s Academia web page.

The downloaded papers do not challenge the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS). The substantive morality of the procedures and their legalization is outside the scope of Project advocacy. The papers simply defend practitioners unwilling to be parties to killing their patients by providing or facilitating EAS services.

Unfortunately, the DWD Clinical Advisor was exasperated by the description of euthanasia and assisted suicide as “killing.” This, he/she exclaims, is a malicious lie that adds to the world’s misery.

Such a cri de cœur calls for a thoughtful discussion of the question it raises.

Does providing euthanasia and assisted suicide entail killing — or does it not? [Full text]

Freedom of conscience in health care: “an interesting moral swamp”?

Responding to Caplan AL. Whose rights come first: Doctors or patients? Medscape, 5 November, 2019

Sean Murphy*

“Whose rights come first?” asks Professor Arthur Caplan in a recent Medscape column. “Doctors’ or patients?”

“You can’t have physicians, pharmacists, nurses, and social workers saying they are not going to do legally allowed medicine or standard-of-care treatment because it violates their rights,” says Professor Caplan. He does suggest that refusal can be allowed if the objector can find a substitute “and it doesn’t disrupt the ER or the organization of healthcare delivery.” . . . Full text