The Conservative Party’s stance on conscience rights and free votes should worry progressive voters

Xtra

Tracey Lindeman

Ah, the freedom of conscience.

There it is, the number-one freedom in the Canadian charter: the right to move through this country in ways that don’t compromise your values or beliefs. This freedom underlies other significant parts of the charter, namely the right to bodily autonomy and equality, or sections seven and 15, respectively. 

Who would want to live in a place where we couldn’t make personal decisions about our own bodies, decisions that our own consciences support? Say you want to abort an embryo or fetus growing inside you—that’s your right. Or say you have a terminal illness or awful quality of life, and you want to die on your own terms. That’s your right, too. 

Except, in Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s vision, in these scenarios it’s the doctors exercising their consciences, not the patients. . . continue reading

Conscience rights don’t stand alone

BC Catholic

Reproduced with permission

Alan Yoshioka

Conscience rights don’t stand alone

Paul Schratz’s Aug. 26 column, “Conscience versus vaccination passports,” objected to mandatory vaccinations on the grounds of Catholic teaching on the primacy of conscience.

Conscience rights in Canada have been under attack for years. So it is understandable for social conservatives to be on high alert for any further threats to our legitimate and intrinsic rights. However, certain watchdogs don’t know how to stop barking.

The section of the Catechism on conscience (1776–1802) indeed merits prayerful consideration. Truly, we must not be compelled to act contrary to our conscience (CCC 1782). So even those of us who strongly favour vaccination should pause to think through policies recently announced by several provinces.

Any restrictions must be rationally related to risk. A passport governs access to certain activities, while a mandate applies to certain categories of people; the latter, being more intrusive, requires a stronger rationale. Accommodations (such as testing) for the unvaccinated (for medical exemptions or those who refuse) would affect how fair any passport system or mandate might be. My point here is that conscience rights concerning vaccine hesitancy must not be considered in isolation from our broader moral obligations.

Schratz quotes the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which wrote in December 2020, “Practical reason makes evident that vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary. In any case, from the ethical point of view, the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good” (emphasis in original).

The principle of the common good is one of the four pillars of Catholic Social Teaching. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church(164–170) explains that the state has an essential role to play in justly harmonizing the interests of different social actors. Not infrequently the state must exert pressure on citizens who on their own show little concern for their neighbours’ well-being. 

Now, by virtue of our dignity as creatures made in the image of God, we have an intrinsic right to bodily integrity. Barring extreme circumstances, we therefore have a right to be informed about the risks and benefits of medical treatment offered to us and to refuse treatment.

Social media feeds are awash with expressions of impatience and even hostility towards people who have not been vaccinated, sometimes as if they all were rigid COVID denialists. A small minority, tragically, have been misled to believe fantastical notions such as that the pandemic is a hoax. Most people’s reasons for hesitation, though, are a good deal more mundane and relatable, as Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd has pointed out.

Research suggests relatively high rates of vaccine hesitancy among persons who have immigrated within the last 10 years, Indigenous persons, and certain racial minorities. In B.C., ethnic Chinese men and women aged 18–34 top the chart at 28% hesitant. 

Some hesitating people are unconvinced that the vaccines are effective. Some are troubled by the risk of side effects. (Serious clotting and heart disorders are treatable and thankfully quite uncommon.)

It is true enough that the COVID vaccines simply haven’t been around long enough for any potential long-term adverse events to emerge. Any previous vaccines that have caused problems in the long term, however, have exhibited clear signs of trouble within a few months of being administered, and such disturbing safety signals simply haven’t shown up among the more than 3 billion persons worldwide who have received at least one dose since December. 

Many people have no strong objection to the vaccines; they just haven’t felt a sense of urgency.

A keen concern among many readers of this paper, though, has been a remote material connection between abortions that were performed decades ago and cell lines used in production of some vaccines and testing of others. In response, the CDF has consistently and authoritatively declared that when ethically irreproachable Covid-19 vaccines are not available it is morally acceptable to receive those such as the four currently authorized in Canada.

We have a duty to form our consciences well, in conformity with the truth. So Catholics should be very wary of anyone who attempts to bind them to a stricter standard than the Church requires. Manifestly, a minority of Catholics have rejected authoritative teachings (see CCC 1785) in favour of an alternative Magisterium. Certain strident commentators on Church affairs, appealing to a small number of clerics sympathetic to their cause, have promoted scrupulosity about the vaccines with little regard for the hundreds of thousands of deaths that the vaccines could have prevented worldwide and countless more deaths that could still be prevented. 

They strain out a gnat (Mt 23:24). Father Matthew Schneider, LC, has argued that anyone sincerely refusing the COVID vaccines on grounds of remote cooperation with abortion would also need for consistency’s sake to refuse almost all the leading prescription and over-the-counter medications, and to boycott all goods made in China. (The latter is a commendable target, but it’s well nigh impossible to meet.)

The CDF cautions that those who do refuse vaccination for reasons of conscience “must do their utmost to avoid … becoming vehicles for the transmission of the infectious agent. In particular, they must avoid any risk to the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons, and who are the most vulnerable” (emphases added).

The risk to public health can be reduced through alternative measures such as masking, frequent asymptomatic testing, and mobility restrictions. Unfortunately, many people who refuse vaccination also balk at such alternatives. Too often they rationalize their practices by cherry-picking biased or even completely bogus research that tells them only what they want to hear (see 2 Tim 4:3-4). 

Sadly typical of such selectivity is Jay Cameron’s comment in the same issue. He asserts that a vaccine mandate per se is unconstitutional, which is hard to fathom, given that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not treat rights as absolute: rights, rather, are “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Catholic teaching, along with the Charter, calls us to broadly consider all the issues at hand. Conscience is not a warrant for unfettered autonomy but a call to responsibility and virtue (CCC 1792, 1781). 

HHS Denies Conscience Freedom for Physicians

National Review

Matt Bowman

We’ve all read about how President Biden recently ordered his Health and Human Services Department to issue a national eviction-moratorium mandate, even though “the bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.” And indeed, the Supreme Court has just struck it down.

What can you do when the president brazenly admits that he is trampling on constitutionally protected freedoms?

But the eviction moratorium is not the only mandate from this president that far exceeds his authority. It’s not even the only illegal mandate from President Biden’s HHS.

On August 26, two organizations of medical doctors and an obstetrician/gynecologist filed a lawsuit in federal court over a mandate from President Biden and HHS that will force doctors to perform gender-transition procedures, even on children.

The administration’s excuse for this mandate is Obamacare, but that 1,000-page statute . . . simply prohibits sex discrimination, as Congress understood that term when it enacted civil-rights laws half a century ago.

Yet on January 20, President Biden ordered his federal agencies to go far beyond the law and reinterpret sex discrimination to include “gender identity” discrimination. . . . continue reading

Erin O’Toole’s abortion stance serves neither physicians nor women

The Conversation

Gwyneth E. Bergman

Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole recently found himself at the centre of the abortion debate as he hit the campaign trail in advance of the federal election on Sept. 20.

The controversy arose when he stated he was pro-choice while simultaneously claiming that he supported the rights of physicians to deny abortions on the basis of conscience.

He has since stepped back from that position, claiming instead that physicians must still provide referrals even when they object to providing abortions themselves.

However, while referrals are often said to strike a reasonable balance between physician and women’s rights, it’s not clear whether that’s actually true. . . continue reading

Canada’s politicians go MIA in debate over conscientious objection for doctors

BioEdge

Michael Cook

Conscientious objection to abortion and euthanasia has emerged as an election issue in Canada’s 2021 federal election – and politicians are refusing to defend it.

The pro-choice leader of the Conservatives, Erin O’Toole, has walked back from a promise in his party’s platform to “protect the conscience rights of health-care professionals.”

Does this mean that the Conservatives will defend the right not to refer patients for Medical Aid in Dying? O’Toole fudged an answer, but he was clearly not in favour.

The governing Liberal Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, jumped on an opportunity to score points: “Pro-choice doesn’t mean the freedom of doctors to choose. It means the freedom of women to choose. Leaders have to be unequivocal on that,” he said last week.

The politicians’ reluctance to support doctors who do not want to refer for abortion or euthanasia is mirrored in the reluctance of the professional associations to defend refusal to refer. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario requires doctors to provide an “effective referral” within a “timely manner” to another professional or agency, should they consciously object. “Physicians must not impede access to care for existing patients, or those seeking to become patients,” reads the college’s policy.

Quebec’s Collège des médecins du Québec says that: “In Quebec, doctors cannot abandon patients or even ignore their request by invoking conscientious objections, particularly in matters of abortion or medical assistance in dying, without referring them to another colleague. It is an ethical obligation.”

However, Colleges in Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Manitoba all explicitly say that professionals who refuse to provide service are not required to make a referral. They cite the Canadian Medical Association’s Code of Ethics and Professionalism.


This article is published by Michael Cook and BioEdge under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact us for permission and fees