Category: Project News Releases

Protection of Conscience Project News Releases

Uniform coercive policy urged for all Canadian physicians

Project submission to the Saskatchewan College of Physicians discloses details

News Release

Protection of Conscience Project

The Protection of Conscience Project has charged that a controversial policy proposed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan is unjustified.

The policy, Conscientious Refusal, will require all Saskatchewan physicians who object to a procedure for reasons of conscience to facilitate the procedure by referring patients to a colleague who will provide it, even if it is homicide or suicide.

The Project noted that the burden of proof was on the policy’s supporters to prove that the policy is justified and that no less oppressive alternatives are available.  “They failed to do so,” states the submission. “The policy should be withdrawn.”

“Conscientious Refusal fails to recognize that the practice of medicine is a moral enterprise, that morality is a human enterprise, and that physicians, no less than patients, are moral agents” said the Project, describing the policy as “profoundly disrespectful of the moral agency of physicians.”

Using documents provided by the College, the Project’s submission traces the origin of the policy to a meeting in 2013. The meeting was apparently convened by the Conscience Research Group (CRG), activist academics whose goal is to compel physicians unwilling to provide morally contested procedures like abortion or euthanasia to refer patients to someone willing to do so. They presented a coercive model policy that had been drafted to achieve that goal.

According to a CPSS memo, College attendees included Saskatchewan Associate Registrar Bryan Salte, Dr. Gus Grant, Registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia, Andréa Foti of the Policy Department of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and a representative of the Collège des Médecins du Québec. They agreed upon a text virtually identical to the CRG model.

In May, 2014, Bryan Salte proposed the policy to Registrars of the Colleges of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, who, he reported, agreed to review it and consider implementing it. He later urged all of the Registrars of Colleges of Physicians in Canada to adopt the coercive policy or one very like it, noting that “physician assisted suicide, in particular” would be present a challenge for administrators.

“Any College that is an outlier, either because it has adopted a different position than other Colleges, or because it has not developed a policy, will potentially be placed in a difficult position,” he warned.

The CPSS memo discloses that, unbeknownst to physicians, officials in several provinces have been making plans behind closed doors to suppress freedom of conscience in the medical profession.

“One of the disturbing aspects of the story,” notes the submission, “is what appears to be a pattern of concealment, selective disclosure, and false or misleading statements that all serve the purpose of supporting the policy.”

The Project’s most recent submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario identifies a similarly troubling pattern, describing briefing materials supplied to College Council in support of its controversial policy as “not only seriously deficient, but erroneous and seriously misleading.”

Project Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan (2015)

Project Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (2015)

Supreme Court of Canada orders legalization of physician assisted suicide – AND euthanasia

Physicians unwilling to kill already face demands that they find someone who will

Protection of Conscience Project News Release

In a 9-0 ruling the Supreme Court of Canada struck down two sections of Canada’s Criminal Code “insofar as they prohibit physician-assisted death” in circumstances outlined by the Court. It appears that most or all of the major media outlets understood this to mean that the Court had legalized physician assisted suicide.

In fact, the Court has authorized physicians not only to help eligible patients commit suicide, but to kill them – whether or not they are capable of suicide. The ruling permits both physician assisted suicide and physician administered euthanasia in the case of competent adults  who have clearly consented to being killed, and who have a grievous irremediable medical condition “including an illness, disease or disability” that causes “enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual.”

The Court limited its ruling to the facts of the Carter case, but offered no opinion “on other situations” where physicians might be asked to kill patients or help them commit suicide. It is highly likely that the parameters set by the Court in Carter will be expanded in federal or provincial laws or in later litigation. It would certainly be a serious mistake to presume that the goalposts set in Carter will not be moved.

Even where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal, most physicians are unwilling to do what the Supreme Court of Canada now expects Canadian physicians to do: lethally inject patients and write prescriptions for lethal medications.

However, acknowledging the joint intervention of the Protection of Conscience Project, Catholic Civil Rights League and Faith and Freedom Alliance and submissions by others, including the Canadian Medical Association, the Court stated: “In our view, nothing in the declaration of invalidity which we propose to issue would compel physicians to provide assistance in dying.”

The judges noted that “a physician’s decision to participate in assisted dying is a matter of conscience and, in some cases, of religious belief,” and that “the Charter rights of patients and physicians will need to be reconciled.”

Unfortunately, euthanasia activists understand “reconciliation” to mean that physicians unwilling to kill patients or help them kill themselves should be forced to refer them to a colleague willing to do so. This is the view of Dr. James Downar, a Toronto palliative care physician, who told the Canadian Medical Association Journal that it is critical to ensure all Canadians have access to “physician assisted dying.”

Commenting on the remarks attributed to Dr. Downar, Protection of Conscience Project Administrator Sean Murphy noted that many other palliative care physicians were concerned about ensuring access to palliative care, not finding physicians willing to kill patients.

“They certainly aren’t inclined to force colleagues to participate in assisted suicide and euthanasia,” he said. “Quite the contrary: many would refuse to direct patients to physicians willing to kill them or help them commit suicide.”

“Carter is not the last word on the euthanasia, assisted suicide and freedom of conscience,” he added, “but only the first of many to come.”

For details, see Supreme Court of Canada orders legalization of physician assisted suicide – AND euthanasia

A watchdog in need of a leash

Ontario College of Physicians manipulates consultation process

New Release

For immediate release

Protection of Conscience Project

It appears that the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is manipulating its consultation process to support a controversial draft policy intended to force doctors to do what they believe to be wrong.

The College is intervening in a Discussion Forum about Professional Obligations and Human Rights (POHR), apparently to discredit critics and defend the policy. The Forum is supposed to be used by the public to provide feedback on the policy, and to post emails and written submissions the College receives from the public.

But on 29 January the College posted a comment accusing Professor Margaret Somerville of misrepresenting its policy in a National Post column. The comment included a link to a letter to the National Post from College President, Dr. Carol Leet.

Not content with interfering in the consultation by posting its own statement, the College impersonated anonymous forum participants and used its statement to reply to comments supporting Professor Somerville’s “modest proposal.”

Someone at the College seems to have had second thoughts about impersonating participants, because the replies were revised a couple of days later to identify the College as the author. But the purported correction of participant responses still violates College policy.

Sean Murphy, Administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project, thinks College officials are interfering in the consultation because they are afraid that more people will begin to realize what the draft policy really means.

“In her National Post column, Professor Somerville succinctly critiqued the draft policy, and offered a reasonable alternative,” he said. “If Dr. Leet disagreed, she was within her rights to write a letter to the editor.”

“But,” he added, “interfering in the consultation process is unacceptable.”

Murphy observed that the College is supposed to be the watchdog protecting the public and profession from unethical conduct.

“It seems this watchdog needs a leash.”

For details, see A watchdog in need of a leash: Ontario College of Physicians manipulates consultation process

Saskatchewan physicians to be forced to do what they believe to be wrong

Policy wording supplied by abortion and euthanasia activists

Policy would apply to euthanasia, if legalized.

Protection of Conscience Project News Release

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan is proposing a draft policy demanding that physicians who object to “legally permissible and publicly-funded health services” must direct patients to colleagues who will provide them.  If another physician is unavailable, the College demands that they provide “legally permissible and publicly-funded” services,  even if doing so “conflicts with physicians’ deeply held and considered moral or religious beliefs.”

Physicians usually refuse to participate in abortion because they believe it is wrong to kill what the criminal law refers to as a child that has not become a human being.1 The proposed policy will require them to find a physician willing to do the killing they won’t do.  Should the Supreme Court of Canada legalize euthanasia, the policy will require objecting physicians who refuse to kill patients to find someone who will.

The seamless fit between referral for abortion and referral for euthanasia is not surprising.  The draft College policy was largely written by abortion and euthanasia activists, notably Professor Jocelyn Downie of Dalhousie University.

In a 2006 guest editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Professor Downie and another law professor claimed that objecting physicians are obliged to refer patients for abortion.2  Their views were vehemently rejected by physicians and repudiated by the Canadian Medical Association.3  Partly as a result of the negative response, Professor Downie and her colleagues in the “Conscience Research Group” decided to convince Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons to impose it.4

Saskatchewan’s draft policy is taken almost verbatim from their “Model Conscientious Objection Policy.”

The Conscience Research Group is  a tax-funded initiative that includes Professors Downie and Daniel Weinstock.5   Both  were members of an “expert panel” that recommended that health care professionals who object to killing patients should be compelled to refer patients to someone who would,6 because (they claimed) it is agreed that they can be compelled to refer for “reproductive health services.”7

Current efforts by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario to suppress freedom of conscience in the medical profession may have been influenced by the Conscience Research Group.  However, the College in Saskatchewan is the first to copy and paste its preferred model into a draft policy.

The Project insists that it is incoherent and contrary to sound public policy to include a requirement to do what one believes to be wrong in a professional code of ethics. It is also an affront to the best traditions of liberal democracy, and, ultimately, dangerous.

The College Council has approved the policy in principle, but will accept feedback on it until 6 March, 2015.

Notes:

1.  Criminal Code, Section 238(1). (Accessed 2014-12-02)

2. Rodgers S. Downie J. “Abortion: Ensuring Access.” CMAJ July 4, 2006 vol. 175 no. 1 doi: 10.1503/cmaj.060548 (Accessed 2014-12-02).

3.  Blackmer J. Clarification of the CMA’s position on induced abortion. CMAJ April 24, 2007 vol. 176 no. 9 doi: 10.1503/cmaj.1070035 (Accessed 2014-02-22)

4.   McLeod C, Downie J. “Let Conscience Be Their Guide? Conscientious Refusals in Health Care.” Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) doi:10.1111/bioe.12075 Volume 28 Number 1 2014 pp ii–iv

5.   Let their conscience be their guide? Conscientious refusals in reproductive health care: Meet the team.(Accessed 2014-11-21)

6.  Schuklenk U, van Delden J.J.M, Downie J, McLean S, Upshur R, Weinstock D. Report of the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on End-of-Life Decision Making (November, 2011) p. 101 (Accessed 2014-02-23)

7.   Schuklenk U, van Delden J.J.M, Downie J, McLean S, Upshur R, Weinstock D. Report of the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on End-of-Life Decision Making (November, 2011) p. 62 (Accessed 2014-02-23)

Ontario physicians to be forced to do what they believe to be wrong

Draft policy demands that objectors provide or refer.

Policy would apply to euthanasia, if legalized.

Protection of Conscience Project News Release

A draft policy of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario demands that physicians must provide services to prevent imminent “harm, suffering and/or deterioration,” even if doing so is contrary to their moral beliefs.

Should the Supreme Court of Canada legalize euthanasia, the policy will require objecting physicians to lethally inject patients themselves if a delay would result in “harm” or “suffering.” In less urgent circumstances, the policy will require physicians unwilling to kill patients to promptly refer them to “a non-objecting, available physician or other health-care provider.”

However, many physicians who object to killing patients for reasons of conscience would also object to referral. Dr. Charles Bernard, President of Quebec’s Collège des médecins, has explained that mandatory referral effectively nullifies freedom of conscience: “It is as if you did it anyway.”1

Dr. Bernard was talking about Quebec’s euthanasia law, but the same principle holds with respect to abortion – another procedure that involves killing.

Prominent academics and activists want to force objecting physicians to provide or refer for abortion and contraception. They and others have led increasingly strident campaigns to suppress freedom of conscience among physicians to achieve that goal. The College’s draft policy clearly reflects their influence.

However, crusades against physicians who refuse to provide or refer for abortion are dress rehearsals for eventual campaigns against physicians who refuse to kill patients. It is not a coincidence that activists who would force objecting physicians to facilitate abortion and contraception also intend to force objectors to refer for euthanasia – and for the same reasons.2

The Project insists that it is incoherent and contrary to sound public policy to include a requirement to do what one believes to be wrong in a professional code of ethics. It is also an affront to the best traditions of liberal democracy, and, ultimately, dangerous.

The College Council has tentatively approved the policy, but will accept further public input until 20 February, 2015 before imposing it on Ontario physicians.

Notes:

1.  Consultations, Tuesday 17 September 2013 – Vol. 43 no. 34: Collège des médecins du Québec, (Dr. Charles Bernard, Dr. Yves Robert, Dr. Michelle Marchand) T#154

2. For example: Schuklenk U, van Delden J.J.M, Downie J, McLean S, Upshur R, Weinstock D. Report of the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on End-of-Life Decision Making (November, 2011) p. 62, 69, 101 (Accessed 2014-02-23)