Category: Canada

“NO MORE CHRISTIAN DOCTORS”

  Crusade against NFP-only physicians

“Religious beliefs should remain where they belong – in the private domain.”

 Sean Murphy*

Abstract

A 25 year old woman could not obtain a prescription for contraceptives at a clinic because the physician did not prescribe them for reasons of “medical judgment as well as professional ethical concerns and religious values.”  She obtained the prescription at a clinic two minutes away. A crusade was started against the physician and two colleagues with the same views. Crusaders argued that in a ‘secular’ state health care system, physicians should be forbidden to act on their moral or religious beliefs.

Physicians who refuse to prescribe contraceptives face a difficult challenge, since aggressive contraceptive promotion has left most people unaware of alternatives. Further, the social progress of women is widely attributed to contraceptives, so that failure to provide them risks an adverse reaction. Nonetheless, based on a respectful understanding of female fertility cycles and other factors, plausible reasons can be given to justify refusal to prescribe contraceptives and recommendation of Natural Family Planning.

The Supreme Court of Canada has acknowledged that secularists are believers, no less persons with religious beliefs. There is no legal warrant for the idea that a secular state must be purged of the expression of religious belief. The claim that a secular state or health care system is “faith-free” is radically false. Both religious belief and secularism can result in narrow dogmatism and intolerance, as demonstrated by the crusade against the physicians.

Since the practice of medicine is an inescapably moral enterprise, every decision concerning treatment is a moral decision. Since the practice of morality is a human enterprise, the secular public square is populated by people with many moral viewpoints. To discriminate against religious belief is a distortion of liberal principles. Moreover, if religious believers can be forced to do what they believe to be wrong, so can non-religious believers. This would establish a destructive and dangerous ‘duty to do what is wrong.’

It is essential to maintain the integrity of physicians and well-being of patients. After abortion was legalized, a difficult compromise emerged that safeguards both, while protecting the community against a purported ‘duty to do what is wrong.’ Nonetheless, some people are trying to entrench that duty in medical practice, moving from a purported duty to provide or facilitate abortion to a duty to kill or facilitate the killing of patients by euthanasia. It is unacceptable to compel people to commit or even to facilitate what they see as murder, and punish or penalize them if they refuse. It is equally unacceptable to insist that physicians must not act upon beliefs, because it is impossible; one cannot act morally without reference to beliefs. Such policies are inconsistent with the central place occupied by individual conscience and judgment in a liberal democracy.

Freedom of conscience can be adequately accommodated in a society characterized by a plurality of moral and political viewpoints if appropriate distinctions are made. The first of these is the distinction between the exercise of perfective freedom of conscience: pursuing an apparent good – and preservative freedom of conscience: refusing to participate in wrongdoing. The state can sometimes legitimately limit perfective freedom of conscience by preventing people from doing what they believe to be good, but it does not follow that it is equally free to suppress preservative freedom of conscience by forcing them to do what they believe to be wrong.

To force people to do something they believe to be wrong is always an assault on their personal dignity and essential humanity, and it always has negative implications for society. It is a policy fundamentally opposed to civic friendship, which grounds and sustains political community and provides the strongest motive for justice. It is inconsistent with the best traditions and aspirations of liberal democracy, since it instills attitudes more suited to totalitarian regimes than to the demands of responsible freedom. Even the strict approach taken to limiting other fundamental rights and freedoms is not sufficiently refined to be safely applied to limit freedom of conscience in its preservative form. Like the use of potentially deadly force, if the restriction of preservative freedom of conscience can be justified at all, it will only be as a last resort and only in the most exceptional circumstances.

That a young woman had to drive around the block to fill a birth control prescription does not meet this standard.

Part 1:  The Making of a Story

 

Liberal Party of Canada adopts pro-euthanasia/assisted suicide policy

Canada’s Liberal Party, meeting at a policy convention in Montreal, Quebec, has overwhelmingly adopted a policy resolution favouring the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide.  However, the policy is not binding on the party leader, Justin Trudeau, so it is not certain that it will be included in his official platform in the next Canadian federal election.  The policy resolution calls for a change in the law after public consultation.  [National Post]

Quebec euthanasia bill stalled

The government of Quebec was unable to convince the opposition Liberal Party to complete debate on Bill 52, legislation to legalize euthanasia, in order to bring it to a vote before the Quebec National Assembly adjourned for two weeks.  The government has tabled a budget, which takes precedence over other bills.  It is believed that the government will call an election when the Assembly returns, which means that the euthanasia bill will not pass.  It could be resurrected by a government formed after the election. [CBC News]

Quebec official considers expanding euthanasia to minors, dementia patients

Although Bill 52, Quebec’s euthanasia legislation, has not yet passed the National Assembly, the secretary of the Collège des médecins du Québec, the state regulator of medical practice, has suggested that grounds for euthanasia will likely be broadened after the bill passes.  Dr. Yves Robert, speaking of Alzheimer patients and those under 18, said “We will have to think about that, not only for [incapable] adults but
obviously for youngsters who face terminal diseases.” [National Post]  His statement is consistent with statements made by various groups giving evidence in committee hearings.  For example, the Quebec Commission on Human Rights and Youth Rights takes the position that failing to provide euthanasia for mentally incompetent patients and minors would constitute a violation of human rights, and warned legislators that if they did not amend the bill to include it, the change would be forced through civil action.

Judge rules family cannot order caregivers to starve mother to death

In a 44 page judgement, Mr. Justice Greyell of the Supreme Court of British Columbia has ruled that family members cannot order caregivers at a nursing home to starve an 83 year old resident to death.  Margot Bentley, age 83, is in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease.  Based on written instructions she left before being diagnosed with the disease, family members went to court to stop caregivers from spoonfeeding her when she opened her mouth to accept food.  The judge noted that she is not dying, and that to comply with their wishes wold mean that Mrs. Bentley would die from starvation and dehydration and not an underlying disease.

Having considered the evidence, he rejected the claim that Mrs.  Bentley is in a “vegetative state” as “neither useful nor accurate,” concluding, instead, that it was possible that she had sufficient mental function to decide whether or not to eat and drink and to communicate that decision in non-verbal ways.  He held that spoon-feeding was not “health care” within the meaning of the law, but a form of personal care.  While he agreed that, under the common law, a competent adult can refuse food and fluids and thus commit suicide, he ruled that there was no legal precedent for the finding that such a decision could be made on behalf of an incompetent person by a proxy decision maker.  On the other hand he recognized statutory and public policy considerations that would tell against such a finding.

The case is of interest because it demonstrates how the kind of directives the family pursued in this case can generate conflicts of conscience among caregivers and health care workers.