Category: Canada

Doctor-assisted suicide a therapeutic service, says Canadian Medical Association

 Many technical questions remain following Supreme Court decision to allow medical aid in dying

CBC News

The Canadian Medical Association supports patients who seek “medical aid in dying” as well as physicians’ choice to participate, the group’s president said Thursday in response to a Supreme Court decision.

As the legal environment changes, the CMA said it will support doctors and patients who find medical aid in dying their best option.

“What we want to do is really make sure patients who are eligible under the new rules have access to this therapeutic service, but at the same time we need to be very careful that physicians have the right to conscientious objection for moral or ethical reasons or religious reasons,” CMA president Dr. Chris Simpson said in an interview from Yellowknife. . . [Full Text]

 

Ontario policy forcing doctors to have role in abortion will have ‘devastating’ consequences: bishops’ group

Liane Laurence

OTTAWA, February 5, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — A national Catholic organization sponsored by Canada’s bishops has asked Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons to reject a proposed policy that threatens to force doctors into providing abortions and contraceptives in some circumstances.

The draft policy, which is open for public input until February 20, “would severely restrict the rights of conscience of medical practitioners,” and will have “devastating” consequences, the Ottawa-based Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) charged in a February 4 statement. If the College approves the policy, doctors who want to keep their integrity “may be forced” to leave Ontario or to quit medicine altogether, they said, leaving distressed patients behind. . . [Full text]

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.

Let it be known that freedom of conscience still matters

The Catholic Register

Lucas Vivas

When patients are asked what they want in a doctor, a common response is compassion and integrity. Good doctors follow their convictions in trying to do what is right for their patient, and good doctors should not be separated from their consciences and humanity when caring for others.

Unfortunately, however, the integrity of physicians is under attack by the very organization that is supposed to promote good medicine in Ontario.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), the body that grants licences to physicians to practise in Ontario, plans to drastically restrict the freedom-of-conscience rights of physicians. At present, the CPSO allows doctors to step aside when a patient requests a treatment or procedure that is in conflict with a doctor’s moral or religious beliefs. For example, a Catholic gynecologist could decline to perform abortions. . . [Full text]

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