Category: Countries

Protection of Conscience Project weighs in on Alberta Bill 18

Recommends extension of protection, clarification of provisions re: health care facilities

News Release

For Immediate Release

Protection of Conscience Project

The Protection of Conscience Project has made a submission concerning Alberta Bill 18 (Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act). The bill is to provide the framework for the provision of euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS: known in Canada as Medical Assistance in Dying/MAiD).

The bill does not mention freedom of conscience or religion, but some provisions will have an impact on these fundamental freedoms for nurse and medical practitioners and health care facilities. The Project submission is limited to those provisions.

The submission recommends that the bill be amended to include affirmation of practitioner freedom to refuse to actively assist in or facilitate the provision of EAS/MAiD, and to prohibit bullying or harassment of and discrimination against those who refuse to collaborate in the services. Further: these provisions should be applied to all regulated health professionals, since medical and nurse practitioners are not the only regulated health professionals likely to be called upon to collaborate in EAS/MAiD.

Affirmation of the freedom of health facility operators to refuse to permit EAS/MAiD on their premises is laudable and necessary. However, the provision that affirms their freedom to refuse to permit the provision of opinions related to EAS/MAiD on their premises invites confusion and conflict. The Project recommends that this be clarified.

See the Project submission online.

Contact:

Sean Murphy, Administrator
Protection of Conscience Project
Email: protection@consciencelaws.org

Freedom to refuse euthanasia relevant to protection of practitioners, institutions – and patients

Alberta’s Bill 18 in light of assurances to Supreme Court of Canada

News Release

For immediate release

Protection of Conscience Project

Introduced on 18 March in the provincial legislature, the Alberta Government’s Bill 18, the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act, will provide the framework for Alberta’s provision of euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS: known in Canada as “Medical Assistance in Dying”/MAiD).

The bill makes no reference to conscience. Nonetheless, it appears to offer substantial protection for health care practitioners and health care facilities by formally recognizing their freedom to refuse to collaborate in killing patients or helping patients kill themselves.

“In this respect, Bill 18 seems to deliver on assurances given to the Supreme Court of Canada by the late Joseph Arvay,” said Sean Murphy, Administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project.

Joseph Arvay led the constitutional challenge that ended the absolute prohibition of euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.

“The title of Bill 18 reflects what Mr. Arvay told the Supreme Court of Canada,” explained Murphy. “He believed that physicians were ideal euthanasia practitioners because, in his words, ‘[I]t is an irrefutable truth that all doctors believe it is their professional and ethical duty to do no harm.’”

Which means, in almost every case, that they will want to help their patients live, not die. It is for the very reason that we advocate only physician assisted dying and not any kind of assisted dying because we know physicians will be reluctant gatekeepers, and only agree to it as a last resort.1

“Mr. Arvay assured the Supreme Court of Canada that physicians would only agree to euthanasia as a ‘last resort,’” said Murphy. “So far, Alberta’s government seems to be the only one in Canada willing to make that a reality.”

“That is important not only for practitioners who object to euthanasia and assisted suicide in principle, but for EAS practitioners who may be unwilling to collaborate in the procedures in particular cases,” he added. “And, if we accept Mr. Arvay’s reasoning, it is equally important for the protection of patients.”

The Protection of Conscience Project does not take a position on the acceptability of morally/ethically contested services like EAS. It is reviewing the text of Bill 18 with a view to making a submission to the Alberta government.

Contact:
Sean Murphy, Administrator
Protection of Conscience Project
protection@consciencelaws.org

Notes:

  1. Carter v Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5, [2015] 1 SCR 331 (Oral argument, Appellant), Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), “Webcast of the Hearing on 2014-10-15” (22 January, 2018) at 00:20:03 to 00:20:40. ↩︎

Project Advisor Iain Benson honoured

News Release

Protection of Conscience Project

Project Advisor Professor Iain T. Benson has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales (FRSN).

A Fellow is someone “ who has made outstanding achievements in one or more of academia, industry, government, public administration, culture or civil society, is held in high professional standing or has made a significant contribution to the welfare and well-being of Australia.” The Society describes him as “an internationally recognized barrister, teacher and writer on legal philosophy.”

The Royal Society of New South Wales is a learned society that traces its origins to the Philosophical Society of Australasia formed in 1821, with its purpose to ‘awaken a spirit of research or excite a thirst for information.’ That sentiment that is alive today through the mission of enriching lives through knowledge and inquiry, principally through public, interdisciplinary discussions and debates of important matters in the sciences and humanities.

Contact: Sean Murphy, Administrator
Email: protection@consciencelaws.org

Nova Scotia medical regulator: unwilling physicians must collaborate in euthanasia and other controversial procedures

News Release

For Immediate Release

Protection of Conscience Project

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia (CPSNS) has adopted a new policy (Conscientious Objection) that will compel physicians unwilling to provide a service for reasons of conscience – including euthanasia – to help patients obtain the service elsewhere. The College adopted Conscientious Objection notwithstanding letters from at least 24 Nova Scotia physicians indicating that they would have to retire early or leave the province if the policy were ratified by the College Council.

The hostility of the CPSNS to physician freedom of conscience may reflect the College Registrar’s longstanding promotion of mandatory effective referral for abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide. Nova Scotians will not be well-served by morally partisan CPSNS standards likely to cause physicians to emigrate, retire, restrict their practices or leave family medicine or palliative care.

It is unacceptable to compel unwilling physicians to become parties to killing their patients or to other procedures they believe to be gravely wrong and/or contrary to good medical practice. The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has repeatedly gone on record against mandatory effective referral, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta does not support it, contrary to what Conscientious Objection seems to imply by referencing these authorities.

The Protection of Conscience Project is a non-profit, non-denominational initiative that advocates for freedom of conscience among health care workers. It does not take a position on the acceptability of morally contested procedures. The Project’s critical review of Conscientious Objection addresses issues directly or indirectly related to the protection of physician freedom of conscience, including:

Contact:
Sean Murphy, Administrator,
Protection of Conscience Project
Email: protection@consciencelaws.org

No Other Options

Newly revealed documents depict a Canadian euthanasia regime that efficiently ushers the vulnerable to a “beautiful” death.

New Atlantis

Alexander Raikin

“I find that the act of offering the option of an assisted death is one of the most therapeutic things we do,” Stefanie Green tells me. She sees it in the faces of her patients — they’re “relieved.” Sometimes it actually means they’ll choose to live longer, to keep fighting, because now they know they can end their suffering if it becomes intolerable.

I wanted to know if Green, a physician specializing in euthanasia in British Columbia, is finding her job easier now than she did at first. “Is it more normal for me to be writing scripts and picking up lethal drugs and driving across town and doing this?” she asks back. It’s a rhetorical question. “Yeah, it’s oddly okay for me to be doing that. I don’t find it shocking anymore, but the events are still extraordinary.”

Green has her own term for these extraordinary events, drawing on her prior experience as an obstetrician, when she helped bring people into the world. “At both ‘deliveries,’ as I call them, I am invited into a most intimate moment in people’s lives,” she writes in her book.

The procedure, she assures me on our call, is “100 percent effective.” If her patient asks to die, and if her schedule, her ethics, and the law permits it, she will administer a lethal injection. . . continue reading