Category: Videos

Doctors make charter challenge on right to refuse care on religious grounds

Christian medical groups claim charter rights violated

CBC News

Christian medical professionals are challenging Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in court over a policy that requires doctors to provide or at least refer medical services, even when they clash with personal values.
In a statement of claim filed in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, two groups  –  the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians’ Societies  –  and five individual doctors say the college’s policy violates their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. . . [Full text]

Webcast on Ontario Physicians’ Conscience Rights

On February 8 the Catholic Civil Rights League, the Toronto Catholic Doctors’ Guild, and Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute held a seminar/webinar to help you frame your response to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s policy document on professional obligations and human rights.

Freedom to Care: The Threat to Conscience Rights in Medicine

The CMDS web page has additional information on this issue on their web site including posters, newsletter inserts, talking points, instructions on how to access the Colleges and answer their surveys, legal opinions, articles and our brief to the OMA.

The deadlines for public input are looming – Ontario is February 20th, Saskatchewan is March 6.

Please help by spreading the word about their video and resources to your contacts. This might spur more people on to getting involved in this issue and expressing their concerns to the colleges.

Website and petition launched to protect physician freedom of conscience in Canada

“Forcing me to refer for abortion would force me to move provinces or leave the country to practice family medicine.”

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has no right to force my hand in doing what my medical judgment tells me is wrong. Forcing me to refer for abortion would force me to move provinces or leave the country to practice family medicine. Dr. Marc Gabel, who chairs a working group on this issue, has been reported as saying that “physicians unwilling to provide or facilitate abortion for reasons of conscience should not be family physicians.” But he doesn’t have the right to tell family doctors to change specialties over abortion referral! This is not about access, it is about conformity! And we won’t conform. I invite you to visit the website and join me and sign the petition.

Dr. Martin Owen MD CCFP
Family physician
Member of the Ontario and Alberta Medical Associations