Category: Australia

When doctors say No

A law professor defends physicians’ right to conscientious objection

MercatorNet

Michael Quinlan*

As abortion, euthanasia and other controversial procedures become more widespread, conscientious objection for healthcare workers is becoming a flashpoint for controversy throughout the Western world. Some doctors and ethicists have argued that conscientious objection itself is unethical because doctors are required to fulfil any legal request that their patients make.

MercatorNet interviewed Professor Michael Quinlan, dean of the law school at the Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia, about this contentious issue. He has just published an article on the situation in Australian jurisdictions. [Full text]

New South Wales assisted suicide/euthanasia bill permits refusal, protects practitioners

Euthanasia debate: NSW Parliament to consider drafted legislation on assisted dying

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Ashleigh Raper & Andrew Griffits

New South Wales is a step closer to allowing terminally ill people to voluntarily end their lives, with a draft bill with cross-party support being released today.

The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill has been drafted by a parliamentary working group made up of members from the Coalition, Labor, Greens and an independent.

The draft bill would give a person over the age of 25 the right to request assistance from a medical practitioner to end their life. . . .[ Full text]

  • The bill does not include a protection of conscience provision per se.  However, Sections 6, 24 and 25 permit a practitioner to refuse to participate for any reason, making no distinction between refusal for reasons of conscience and refusal for other reasons.  It also equally protects both participating and non-participating practitioners from criminal and civil liability.

New England Journal of Medicine publishes “attack on medical conscience”

Pro-Lifers: Get Out of Medicine!

First Things

Wesley J. Smith

Doctors in the United States cannot be forced to perform abortions or assist suicides. But that may soon change. Bioethicists and other medical elites have launched a frontal assault against doctors seeking to practice their professions under the values established by the Hippocratic Oath. The campaign’s goal? To force doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others in the health field who hold pro-life or orthodox religious views to choose between their careers and their convictions.

Ethics opinions, legislation, and court filings seeking to deny “medical conscience” have proliferated as journals, legislative bodies, and the courts have taken up the cause. In the last year, these efforts have moved from the relative hinterlands of professional discussions into the center of establishment medical discourse. Most recently, preeminent bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel—one of Obamacare’s principal architects—coauthored with Ronit Y. Stahl an attack on medical conscience in the New England Journal of Medicine, perhaps the world’s most prestigious medical journal. When advocacy of this kind is published by the NEJM, it is time to sound the air raid sirens. . . [Full text]

 

Politicians wrestle with doctors’ consciences in Victoria

Conscientious objection needs to be protected

MercatorNet
Reproduced with permission

Paul Russell*

As the Victorian Ministerial Advisory Panel on “assisted dying” makes ready to release its interim report sometime in April, The Age newspaper turned its attention to the matter of conscience whether a doctor may refuse to take part in any action that would bring about the premature and deliberate death of a person.

Conscience – or the ability to draw upon one’s own personal belief system in making a decision about an action – plays out at different levels in any debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide. . . [Full text]

 

Doctors will have right to refuse assisted death requests under planned reforms

The Age

Farrah Tomazin

Doctors will have the right to refuse to help terminally ill patients who wish to die provided they don’t obstruct people from seeking support elsewhere, under assisted dying laws to be drafted by the Andrews government.

In a high-level report to be considered by cabinet, an expert panel is set to recommend allowing doctors to hold a “conscientious objection” to physician-assisted death – similar to the provisions that allow them to refuse abortions in Victoria.

But medical clinicians who are willing to help patients end their life may be required to have extra training, and anyone who tries to pressure someone to die could face criminal sanctions in a bid to ensure there are strict safeguards against exploitation. . . [Full text]