Doctor’s faith under scrutiny

Barrie physician won’t offer the pill, could lose his licence

 Cheryl Canning

Dr. Stephen Dawson faces a discipline committee at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in April because he refused to prescribe birth control pills to unmarried women.

A Barrie doctor could lose his licence to practise medicine because of his religious beliefs.

Dr. Stephen Dawson faces a discipline committee at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in April because he refused to prescribe birth control pills to unmarried women.

“If a Christian physician must forsake his religious beliefs to maintain his medical licence, we cannot delude ourselves to believe we live in a free country,” said Dawson.

Last summer, four female patients made formal complaints to the college, citing Dawson’s refusal to prescribe birth control to the “unmarried” women as the reason, he said.

Dawson believes that when a doctor prescribes birth control pills to an unmarried woman, he unwittingly promotes sex outside of marriage, because he removes the fear of pregnancy. [Full text]

Project Letter to the BC Medical Journal

British Columbia, Canada
16 February, 2002

Sean Murphy, Administrator
Protection of Conscience Project

The cover of your  January/February 2002 edition highlighting Dr. Roey M. Malleson’s article on ‘emergency contraception’ was unexpected: a brawny, half-naked, Aryan warrior, eyes glinting murderously from under his horned helmet, wielding a copper IUD, crouched to spring and slaughter.

I would like permission to  post the cover on the Project website, and would appreciate it if you would send me seven copies of the issue. The cover is a splendid  illustration of the usual basis for conscientious objection to  potentially abortifacient devices and drugs, and the article provides  an excellent example of moral obfuscation masquerading as science.

Dr. Malleson clearly  believes, as a matter of faith (for it cannot be science), that it is not immoral to destroy an early human embryo by preventing implantation. However, the article fails to explain why this belief should be forced upon those who do not share it. The Journal of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, cited to support Dr. Malleson’s threatening accusation of negligence, is not widely acknowledged to be an infallible authority on faith and morals, nor is Dr. Malleson.

Finally, astute readers will recognize that the law is more complex than suggested by the article. Freedom of conscience is recognized as a fundamental freedom that must be accommodated. It is imprudent and unhelpful to publicly incite civil actions against colleagues in order to secure their submission to the moral outlook so aptly expressed by your cover.

Letter to the Telegraph Journal

New Brunswick, Canada
14 February, 2002

J. Edward Troy,
Bishop Emeritus of  Saint John Rothesay

[Comments in the December, 2001, Bulletin of the College of Physicians and Surgeons  came to media attention in February, 2002, generating pressure on conscientious objectors in New Brunswick.  Catholic Bishop J.  Edward Troy responded to the news reports in this letter, reproduced with permission of the author.  – Administrator-]

The headline on the front page, “MDs’ morals restricting birth control access” (Telegraph-Journal, Feb. 9) was eye-catching. Upon reading the piece, I learned the reporter was culling from the Bulletin of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New Brunswick (CPSNB) in which it was recorded that at its meeting of Nov. 23, 2001, its council discussed the implications of the right of physicians not to participate in a treatment or process to which they morally object.

In other words, the Code of Ethics of the College quite properly permits physicians to practice their profession in accordance with their conscience. The discussion, as recorded in the bulletin, is repeated  almost in its entirety in the Telegraph-Journal. It was particularly noted that some patients are not referred for an abortion or do not receive advice on contraception from their doctors. This is followed by  comments (not contained in the bulletin) from one physician in Saint John who doesn’t have the same moral qualms, and by some remarks from  the administrator of the Morgentaler abortion facility in Fredericton.

There is an underlying indignation present in the article more suitable to an opinion piece than to a news report. The writer goes back to Nov. 23 for this information which is given headline treatment on Feb. 9,  breathlessly zeroing in on the roughly eight per cent of the text in the college bulletin that considers the case of patients whose doctors refuse to counsel abortion or contraception because of their moral  principles.

Nothing about the other important matters the council deliberated upon  and which were reported in the pages of the same bulletin. Nothing about  the patient who died from a heart attack after being refused treatment for heart disease. Nothing about the instances where allegations of  malpractice were lodged against doctors for a variety of reasons that  resulted in loss of life or serious illness. Nothing about the extremely difficult choices physicians are faced with every day and the honest  efforts the vast majority of them make to serve their patients with  integrity and skill, but also with fallibility and occasional failure.

No, the focus, in a somewhat negative and disapproving fashion, on the  good news that physicians are acting conscientiously in their professional lives. Indeed I was impressed and heartened by all that I read in the bulletin precisely because it revealed the conscientious  manner in which the council of the CPSNB monitors and guides its members.

I doubt very much the CPSNB would wish to change its code of ethics so as to require physicians to disregard their consciences, especially today when there are factions promoting euthanasia and  physician-assisted suicide. While the code of ethics of the CPSNB does  not allow the doctor to impose his moral views on the patient, it would be equally objectionable to insist that the patient be authorized to  impose his or her moral outlook on the doctor. One hears of patients demanding a prescription for this or that drug; should the physician be  obliged to comply? There is reference in the newspaper piece to the  “morning after pill” that is not really a contraceptive but rather an abortifacient.

Pro-life doctors do not perform or cause abortions nor do they  co-operate with others in procuring an abortion. They rightly consider that abortion is the taking of a human life at an early stage in its  development.

In today’s social and cultural climate, the opposition to contraception is not easily understood, let alone accepted. This is not surprising  since the whole idea of any binding moral principles in the area of  sexuality is widely rejected. According to the lax standards prevalent in our culture, no sexual behaviour is morally wrong – fornication, promiscuity, adultery, masturbation, homosexuality, bestiality, etc.

With the exception of child sexual abuse, the guiding rationale seems to be a light-hearted “different folks, different strokes!”

If a person adheres to this sexual libertinism, he or she is not likely to be persuaded by any amount of argumentation that artificial methods  of contraception are wrong, nor will he or she be able or willing to  grasp the distinction between them and natural family planning. He or she will not see that the warm embrace of contraception has led logically and historically to the widespread acceptance of abortion.

While the views of the administrator of the Morgentaler facility were  completely predictable, she really demonstrates a lot of nerve in lecturing physicians about ethics. “I think it’s very irresponsible of doctors not to be meeting patients’ needs, regardless of their personal opinion or religious beliefs,” she is quoted as saying.  Now this judgment comes from someone who is managing a business devoted  to the destruction of babies in the womb!

Talk about the moral high ground! Also, please observe the mentality  revealed in this declaration. If the abortionists were in charge, they would require people to act against their conscience. These are the same  folks that are always whining about pro-life people who, they say, wish to impose their morality on them. However, it’s apparently all right for  the pro-abortion people to impose their morality on the rest of us.

She is also reported complaining that “many” women who had  been refused birth control pills by doctors were using other methods such as condoms and became pregnant. Was that a slip of the tongue?  Doesn’t she belong to the school that keeps insisting that condoms  should be made available to teens and others so that they won’t become  pregnant or contract AIDS? What about all that propaganda about  “safe sex?” It appears that she knows, as everyone should,  that condoms do fail with the result that the woman becomes pregnant or  the unaffected partner gets AIDS.

I salute physicians – no doubt the vast majority of practitioners – who refuse to ignore conscience and moral principle in the exercise of their  calling. I honour physicians who do not derive their notions of what is  right and wrong from popular magazines or from the superficial opinions of “celebrities” or from Hollywood script writers or from harangues by those who operate abortuaries.

Doctors have access to a long and solid tradition of medical ethics.  It’s encouraging to see that so many continue to draw on that wisdom in the practice of their profession and aren’t easily swayed by the fog of  moral indifference which covers so much of the world today.

Draft Bill Lacks Conscience Protection, Erodes Trial by Jury

News Release

Protection of Conscience Project

The Canadian government’s proposed Assisted Human Reproduction Act lacks protection for health care workers and others who do not want to participate in morally controversial procedures, and erodes the customary right to trial by jury, according to a letter sent earlier this month to Allan Rock, Canadian Minister of Health.

Project Administrator Sean Murphy noted that, beyond the procedures allowed in the draft text, the bill provides for ad hoc legalization of activities by Orders in Council, which do not require parliamentary scrutiny or approval.

Murphy suggested that the bill would establish an expectation of entitlement to legalized procedures, and cautioned that problems will arise for conscientious objectors, especially if provision of the “controlled activities” were made a condition for federal health care grants or transfer payments.

“Experience in Canada and elsewhere suggests that conscientious objectors will . . . be subjected to coercion and discrimination” or “forced into expensive litigation before human rights tribunals or courts . . . to buy the freedom that ought to have been their birthright.”

The letter requests that the bill be amended to include protection of conscience provisions.

Murphy also expressed alarm that the bill erodes the right to trial by jury for serious offences. He argued that it would be more consistent with Canadian legal traditions to reduce the bill’s summary conviction penalties to bring them into line with those now customary in criminal law.

Do it anyway

More and more Canadian workers are being compelled to violate their own beliefs

 Terry O’Neill

Two of the most commonly heard expressions uttered in the name of modern egalitarian society are “workers’ rights” and “freedom of choice.” Let an employer order a non-Christian to put up Christmas decorations, and it will not be long before news-hungry media and human-rights enforcers show up in the employee’s defence (as happened in B.C. not long ago). However, a growing number of Canadian workers are being discriminated against on  conscience-related issues, and the institutions that should be protecting them are turning a blind eye to their plight. As is becoming increasingly apparent, the double standard seems to be entirely political. [Full text]