Category: Canada

Policy allowing doctors to deny treatment on moral or religious grounds under review

Globe and Mail

Kelly Grant

Doctors who refuse to provide certain treatments on religious or moral grounds must tread delicately or risk trampling human-rights laws, according to the chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which is expected to weigh in soon on a review of professional guidelines for physicians practising in Canada’s largest province.

“First and foremost their job is to provide health-care services to people who require them,” Barbara Hall said. “If [doctors] wish to put forward their own human rights as a barrier to doing that then they may come up against the fact that their rights are not absolute.”

In an interview, Ms. Hall said doctors generally do not enjoy the same legal protections as religious officials – a point her commission underlined to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) when the medical regulator last updated its policy on doctors and the human-rights code in 2008. . . [Full text]

Calgary doctor refuses to prescribe birth control due to personal beliefs

CTVNews.ca

Marlene Leung

A Calgary doctor who will not prescribe birth control because she says it goes against her personal beliefs has triggered outrage among patients.

Dr. Chantal Barry will not prescribe birth control pills due to her religious beliefs. When Barry is working as the lone walk-in physician at the Westglen Medical Centre in southwest Calgary, a sign is put up telling patients that they will not be able to get a prescription for contraception that day.

When Joan Chand’oiseau saw the sign, she was shocked and outraged by the policy, which she says is judgemental.

“It contains overt judgement of my choices and my reproductive health,” she told CTV Calgary. “I think that affects everyone in that clinic, regardless of whether or not they’re visiting that doctor.” . . . [Full text]

Should doctors have the right to refuse to treat a patient?

The Globe and Mail

Kelly Grant

Canada’s largest medical regulator is reviewing its policy on physicians and the human rights code, a document that wrestles with a thorny question: When can a doctor refuse to treat a patient on religious or moral grounds?

The review by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) is a regularly scheduled revisiting of the policy, which was last updated amid controversy in 2008.

But the checkup also comes a few months after word spread online and in the mainstream media of a form letter distributed by three Ottawa doctors who declined to prescribe birth control because of their “religious values,” a rare example of physicians openly refusing – in writing – to provide services for religious reasons.

In another case that surfaced this week, a Calgary woman posted to Facebook a picture of a sign on the door of a walk-in clinic that read: “Please be informed the physician on duty today will not prescribe the birth control pill,” although the sign did not explain why. . . [Full text]

Doctor on duty ‘will not prescribe the birth control pill,’ reads sign at Calgary walk-in clinic

National Post

Manisha Krishnan

CALGARY – A doctor at a Calgary walk-in clinic is refusing to prescribe birth control due to her personal beliefs.

Dr. Chantal Barry will not prescribe contraception, a receptionist at the Westglen Medical Centre confirmed. Patients looking for birth control are provided a list of other offices in the city that prescribe it.

Westglen only has one doctor available to walk-in patients at any given time, so a sign at the facility’s front desk reads, “The physician on duty today will not prescribe the birth control pill.”

“I was shocked and outraged,” said Joan Chand’oiseau, 45, who saw the sign while attending an appointment with her gynecologist Tuesday. Ms. Chand’oiseau immediately posted a photo of the sign on Facebook, prompting angry responses from several of her friends.

“I don’t think her belief system should have any part in my reproductive health,” she said.

Under the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta’s policy on Moral or Religious Beliefs Affecting Medical Care, doctors can refuse to provide medical services, but must ensure the patient is offered timely access to those services from another practitioner. . . [Full text]

Right-to-die already weighing on Quebec’s conscience

 New law has hospitals, doctors grappling with old fears, new moral burdens

Toronto Star

Allan Woods

MONTREAL—Quebec passed a landmark euthanasia law earlier this month meant to end the agony in the final days of a terminal patient’s life. But the legislation has lumped the province’s medical community with an existential burden it is only now confronting.

Doctors are weighing their consciences against their looming legal responsibilities to dying patients. It’s not entirely clear which one will win the day.

“I’ve been working in clinical ethics as a physician for 24 years and this is going to be one of our biggest challenges,” says Dr. Eugene Bereza, director of the centre for applied ethics at Montreal’s McGill University Health Centre.

The process that led to Bill 52, the so-called Medical Aid in Dying legislation, was wrenching enough in a society where the government, school and hospitals were a proxy for the Catholic Church not two generations ago. . . . [Full text]