Category: Protection of Conscience Project

Quebec’s Charter of Values: Preliminaries to the Charter

Implications of state sovereignty over education, religion and
ethics

 Sean Murphy*

 Introduction

It appears from Quebec government policy documents describing its proposed Charter of Values (the precise language of which has yet to be released) that it considers physicians and other health care workers to be state functionaries because they are engaged in the delivery of “public” health care.  As state functionaries, they will be forbidden to wear noticeable religious symbols or clothing, unless local authorities exempt them from this restriction.

However, no exemptions will be allowed to parts of the Charter that will impose secularism and restrict accommodation of religious beliefs.  These are central government policies that are to be enacted through the Charter of Values and related legislation.  This gives rise to an important question.

Will the government of Quebec – sooner or later –  use its Charter of Values to suppress freedom of conscience and religion among health care workers?

An answer to the question is suggested by a review of the Quebec government’s continuing efforts to establish state hegemony in the moral and ethical education of children. . .  Full Text

 

Australian regulator misrepresents physician obligations

Claim that practitioner codes require referral disproved by Australian Medical Association

Sean Murphy*

According to a report in The Examiner, a representative of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Association told a Tasmanian legislative committee that physicians who object to a procedure for reasons of conscience are obliged by professional codes of ethics to refer patients to another physician.  Lisa McIntosh was addressing the Committee concerning a proposed Reproductive Health Bill.

Her assertion is contradicted by a submission by the Australian Medical Association Tasmania, which protested the section of the bill that would force objecting physicians to facilitate morally contested procedures by referral.  The AMA Tasmania submission included quotes from the AMA Code of Ethics and a document from the Medical Board of Australia Good Medical Practice to demonstrate that the draft legislation information paper falsely claimed that there was a duty to refer.

The Committee also heard from Catholic Archbishop Adrian Doyle, whose concerns about the proposed bill included the mandatory referral provision.

 

The problem of unregulated conscientious objection

  Sean Murphy*

In late 2010, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was presented with a report from its Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee expressing deep concern about the problem of “unregulated conscientious objection” in Europe.  The Committee proposed to solve this problem by having states adopt “comprehensive and clear regulations” to address it.

The Council ultimately adopted a resolution that almost completely contradicted the premises of the report, but in 2011 the theme was resurrected by Dr. Leslie Cannold, an Australian ethicist.  Dr. Cannold warned that, “[a]t best, unregulated conscientious objection is an accident waiting to happen,” and, at worst, “a sword wielded by the pious against the vulnerable with catastrophic results.”  It was, she wrote, “a pressing problem from which we can no longer, in good conscience, look away.” . . .[Full text]

 

Proposed Rwandan law would legalize abortion, make conscientious objection illegal

 Law Governing Reproductive Health

Sean Murphy*

After its approval by the Standing Committee on Social Affairs,  Rwandan Member of Parliament Ignatienne Nyirarukundo has brought a proposed Rwandan reproductive health law before the Rwandan Chamber of Deputies for consideration.  The bill is reported to have been initiated five years ago, and is apparently an improved version of a bill that was criticized for violating human rights, contradicting the Rwandan Constitution, and for being so badly translated that its provisions were sometimes given different meanings in different languages.  That bill was rejected by the Rwandan senate.

Nonetheless, the English text of the present bill3 continues to suffer from defects like incoherence and inconsistency that may be the product of poor translation.  In addition, it  include provisions that are likely to be controversial for various reasons. [Full text]

 

Abortion in “rural” British Columbia

 Researchers include city of 85,000 as part of “rural” B.C.

 Sean Murphy*

Abstract: 

Two recent research papers based on a 2011 survey of physicians providing abortion in British Columbia assert that “rural abortion services are disappearing in Canada.”  However, what the papers contribute to an understanding of the “barriers” to abortion services in rural British Columbia is doubtful, for two reasons.  First: the analytical structure proposed (the urban-rural dichotomy as defined by the authors) is inadequate.  Second: the authors ignore the significance of an important variable: the nature of the facilities or institutions where abortions are performed.  Concerns expressed about “access” to abortion are frequently accompanied by demands that freedom of conscience for health care workers should be suppressed.  Given the weaknesses noted above, the authors would have been hard-pressed to justify such a suggestion.  To their credit, they do not do so.
[Full Text]