Category: Project News Releases

Protection of Conscience Project News Releases

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)

Project intervenes in the Supreme Court of Canada

News Release

Protection of Conscience Project

Today the Protection of Conscience Project joined the Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) and Faith and Freedom Alliance in a joint intervention at the Supreme Court of Canada in Carter v. Canada, a case seeking the legalization of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide.

The appeal necessarily involves the issue of freedom of conscience for healthcare providers.   An indeterminate number of healthcare providers consider killing patients or assisting in suicide morally or ethically abhorrent. Their views  are consistent with the current Canadian legal framework, which would be fundamentally changed if euthanasia and assisted suicide were legalized.  Such a change in the law would generate demands that physicians and other healthcare providers directly or indirectly participate in what they consider to be gravely immoral activities.

In the event that the Supreme Court strikes down the criminal law as it relates to euthanasia or assisted suicide, the intervention urged the Court to “make clear to the legislature that any legislation in this area must protect the freedom of conscience of healthcare providers,” ensuring that “healthcare providers are not directly or indirectly coerced into becoming parties to killing patients or assisting patients kill themselves.”

In a Backgrounder on the intervention, Project Administrator Sean Murphy notes the need for robust protection for freedom of conscience among healthcare providers if the law is changed. In that case, he argues, direction from the Court will be needed “to correct a dangerous error that has become increasingly widespread: that the state or a profession may impose upon people a duty to do what they believe to be wrong – even if that means killing people.”

Elsewhere, he observes that the history of abortion law reform in Canada demonstrates that healthcare providers “cannot rely on mere promises of tolerance and respect for freedom of conscience.”

” The greater the demand for a procedure -whether the demand arises from the number of patients or from ideological rights claims –  the sooner objecting health care workers will face discrimination, harassment and coercion. ”

The intervention was presented on behalf of the interveners by Robert Staley, with the participation of Ranjan Agarwal, Jack Maslen, and Sheridan Scott, all of Bennett Jones LLP, together with CCRL President, Philip Horgan.  27 interventions were approved by the Court.

A decision is expected in the Spring of 2015.

 

Protection of conscience initiative launched by New Zealand health care professionals

NEWS RELEASE

For immediate release

Protection of Conscience Project

The New Zealand Health Care Professionals Alliance Te Hononga Mãtanga Haurora O Aortearoa has launched a website highlighting the interest of the Alliance in freedom of conscience in health care.  The new site features a Best Practice Guide, Patient Support and Resources, and an introduction to the Alliance’s Mentorship Programme.

The Alliance is a non-denominational organization that welcomes members from all health care professions, including nurses & midwives, doctors, radiographers, pharmacists, laboratory technologists, anaesthetic technicians, and radiation therapists.  Hospital chaplains may also join.  Membership is open to professionals in training, practice and retirement who support the purposes of the organization.

Sean Murphy, Administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project, offered his congratulations to the Alliance.

“Since the Project began in 1999, it has emphasized the importance of local initiatives of this kind,” he said, “and especially the need for health care professionals to become active in support of their own fundamental freedoms.”

“The people best placed to respond to pressures against freedom of conscience in health care are those closest to the action,” Murphy explained.  “New Zealanders know best what challenges they face in their own country, and how to respond effectively to them.  The history of the Alliance demonstrates that quite clearly.”

The New Zealand Health Professionals Alliance (NZHPA) was incorporated in 2009 in response to an attempt by the Medical Council of New Zealand to suppress freedom of conscience by means of a direction called Beliefs and Medical Practice.  Relying on the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003, the NZHPA applied to the High Court for a judicial review of the draft statement because it considered it unlawful.  The court supported the NZHPA, and the Medical Council ultimately decided not to publish the direction.

General Medical Council guideline criticized by Protection of Conscience Project

Unfair to impose “long-discredited policies of forced conversion and exclusion”

NEWS RELEASE

Protection of Conscience Project

The Protection of Conscience Project has expressed concern that the state physician regulator in the United Kingdom intends to  prosecute those who refuse to convert to the religious, moral or ethical systems it approves.  If actual conversion is not required, it appears that by forcing physicians to do what they believe to be wrong as a condition of practising medicine, the regulator “may simply be resurrecting the Test Act in modern professional dress.”

The criticisms appear in a Protection of Conscience Project submission to the General Medical Council (GMC) of the United Kingdom in response to the draft GMC guideline Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice.  The Project comments that “it would be unfair to impose on physicians long-discredited policies of forced conversion and exclusion that would be plainly unacceptable to other professions and to the people of the United Kingdom as a whole.”

The Project submission points out that it would be hypocritical for the GMC to discipline objecting physicians who refuse to refer  for morally contested treatments, since they act on the same principles applied by the GMC in its policies on organ trafficking and assisted suicide.  Strong exception is taken to the suggestion that physicians act like bigots if they refuse to facilitate adultery, premarital sex, and morally contested services like the mutilation or amputation of healthy body parts or the killing of human embryos or fetuses.

In other respects, the Project expressed qualified agreement with the provisions of Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice and identified parts of the guideline requiring clarification.  Specifically, physicians

  • should do their best to notify patients and employers in advance of treatments to which they object for reasons of conscience, though they cannot be expected to anticipate every possible conflict;
  • should not refuse to provide treatment or care to a patient on the grounds that she has had a previous morally contested treatment;
  • must be prepared to treat “the health consequences of lifestyle choices” with which they disagree or to which they object (though not to provide morally contested treatments);
  • should disclose beliefs only when the disclosure is solicited by a patient, or when it is reasonable to believe that it would be welcomed by the patient;
  • should limit discussion of beliefs to what is relevant to the patient’s care and treatment, taking into account the importance of dialogue that is responsive to the needs of the patient.

The Project cautioned the GMC that physicians should not be discplined or criticized for a conversation naturally arising from the disclosure of conscientious objection, since disclosure is required by its guidelines.  It also warned that an adverse emotional response by a patient is not necessarily evidence of professional misconduct.

The Protection of Conscience Project is a non-profit, non-denominational initiative that advocates for freedom of conscience in health care. The Project does not take a position on the morality or desirability of controversial procedures or services.

Rights Commission threat “blasphemy against the human spirit”

College of Physicians secrecy said unacceptable

News Release

For Immediate Release

Protection of Conscience Project

“Blasphemy against the human spirit.” That is how the Protection of Conscience Project describes a threat by Ontario’s Human Rights Commission to punish doctors who refuse to do what they believe to be wrong. The rebuke is found in a submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Citing writers and philosophers in the democratic tradition, as well as the landmark Morgentaler decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Project argues that to force doctors to act against their conscientious convictions is “to deprive them of their essential humanity.” It calls the proposed policy “profoundly offensive and demeaning.”

“To abandon one’s moral or ethical convictions in order to serve others is prostitution,” states the submission, “not professionalism.”

The brief denies that doctors who refuse to do what they believe is wrong are violating the Human Rights Code. It explains that they are concerned about “complicity in wrongdoing,” not race, sex or other patient characteristics.

The Project submission addresses the College draft policy, Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code. Deadline for comment on the policy was extended to 12 September following protests when news of it became public.

The President of the College told the National Post that the draft has been revised, but refuses to make it public. Project Administrator Sean Murphy finds College secrecy unacceptable.

“At least two substantial briefs reached the College only on Friday,” he said. “The National Post story appeared Saturday. It seems very unlikely that College officials could have considered either submission before revising the draft. This brings into question the validity of the consultation process.”

“But the more important issue,” he said, “is that decision-making that impacts fundamental freedoms should be conducted transparently, not secretly. Why keep the revised draft secret? Is there something to hide?”

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