Category: Canada

Physicians in Ottawa under attack for refusing to prescribe contraceptives

Physicians in Ottawa under attack for refusing to prescribe contraceptivesA 25 year old woman went to a walk-in clinic in Ottawa, Ontario, to get a prescription for birth control pills.  She was advised the physician on duty did not prescribe contraceptives, and was given a letter stating that for reasons of  “medical judgment as well as professional ethical concerns and religious values” he would assist patients only with Natural Family Planning.  She declined to return the next day to see another physician, and drove around the block to another clinic about two minutes away.  She posted the letter on Facebook, which resulted in a campaign against three Ottawa physicians who decline to provide contraceptives.

Outraged Facebookers called the physician a “jerk,” a “complete anachronism,” “disgusting,” incompetent, “unethical and unprofessional,” a “worthless piece of ____,” a “crummy doctor,” “an idiot,” and described him as – judgemental.

“Goofballs like this,” wrote one, “are the best walking arguments for the birth control they don’t believe in.”

“He should move to the states, or maybe Dubai, where he will be among his own kind.”

One Facebooker suggested that women should go to the clinic to make gratuitous requests for prescriptions, apparently for the purpose of fabricating complaints against the physician: “I think that women should start going in looking for prescriptions for The Pill. You know, just a top up till their family doctor can see them again.”

 

 

Supreme Court of Canada accepts appeal of assisted suicide/euthanasia decision

The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear an appeal from the decision of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which overturned a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that approved physician assisted suicide and euthanasia.  Carter v. Canada (Attorney General).

Supreme Court of Canada signals change in jurisprudence

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada has struck down three laws restricting prostitution and suspended the effect of its ruling for one year to give the government an opportunity to draft replacement legislation.  Some observers are of the view that the ruling increases the likelihood that assisted suicide or euthanasia will be legalized in Canada, either by judicial fiat or by legislation supporting such a change.  In the prostitution judgement, the court granted lower courts much greater latitude to set aside earlier Supreme Court precedents if new legal issues are raised, or if there has been some other change that “fundamentally shifts the parameters of the debate.”

The Supreme Court is set to hear an appeal from British Columbia in the case of Carter v. Canada, which turns on a precedent established by the Supreme Court in 1993 in the Rodriguez case.  The circumstances are virtually identical (plaintiffs suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease seeking a right to assisted suicide/euthanasia).  The Supreme Court judge in Carter distinguished the case from Rodriguez on some issues and ruled in favour of the plaintiff, but the British Columbia Court of Appeal overturned the ruling in a split decision, citing the Rodriguez precedent as binding.  Since the Supreme Court accepted the trial judge’s finding in the prostitution case that new evidence required a precedent to be set aside, counsel for the plaintiffs in the Carter case is optimistic that it will take the same approach when ruling on euthanasia. [National Post]

 

Quebec’s latest niqab panic

 National Post

Chris Selley

Never having witnessed fascism taking hold, I wouldn’t claim to know it to see it. But whenever commentators have likened the Parti Québécois’ proposed “secularism charter” to the early drumbeats of some historically dire intolerance, my first instinct has been to scoff.

It’s certainly stupid and unfair to threaten public servants with unemployment if they don’t forsake certain religious customs, all to solve a problem that no one except the pollsters seems able to quantify. It’s certainly disturbing that any political party would stoop so low in search of support, and all the more so that the PQ seems to be finding it down there.

But whatever the polls say, Montreal seems more cosmopolitan every time I visit. Despite reports of an uptick in anti-Muslim confrontations, surely it’s a fantastically unlikely breeding ground for any sort of widespread, street-level discrimination.

Surely. But events recently took a shivery turn: A week ago, a woman spotted two daycare workers, dressed in niqabs, marshalling their young charges through the streets of Verdun, in southwest Montreal. And as one does nowadays, she snapped a photo and posted it to Facebook.

Thousands of people saw it. And not all of the commentary was polite. [Full text]

 

Family goes to court to stop spoon-feeding of elderly mother in nursing home

82 year old Margot Bentley is living in a nursing home in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, administered by the Maplewood Seniors Care Society, Fraser Health Authority and the government of British Columbia.  She has Alzheimer’s disease and is being spoon-fed because she can still swallow.  She is not force-fed if she does not open her mouth.  Her family has launched a civil suit to compel the nursing home to stop feeding her, citing her “living will” signed in 1991, about ten years before she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  The document states that she did not want “nourishment or liquids” if she is suffering from an incurable disease.  The defendant nursing home has filed another “living will” that states that she would accept “basic care.”  The authenticity of the document is disputed by the family.  The nursing home argues that spoon-feeding is basic care, not “medical” care or treatment, and is legally obligatory.  The family insists that spoon-feeding must be discontinued, since patients are entitled to refuse medical treatment or care, and Margot Bentley had stated that refusal in her “living will.”   [Vancouver Sun]