Category: Commentary

Beware of assisted-suicide zealots

National Post

Will Johnston

For at least a few more months, the Canadian medical system will continue to be a safe space, free of assisted suicide and euthanasia. But all that is about to change. In order to ensure our hospitals and palliative care centres remain places where patients feel safe and secure, we must respect doctors’ conscience rights, rather than listen to activists who seek to impose their one-size-fits-all policy on the rest of us.

For instance, the palliative care centres in Quebec that refuse to have anything to do with euthanasia, for reasons of medical judgment and ethics, have apparently angered Jean-Pierre Menard, the lawyer who helped write Quebec’s euthanasia law, Bill 52. The act specifically states that palliative care centres are not required to provide euthanasia service — but maybe to Menard, those were just soothing words to get the bill passed. Now Menard says money should be taken away from palliative services that won’t provide euthanasia on their premises. And the minister of health, Gaetan Barrette, has threatened to revoke the hospital privileges of doctors who won’t comply. . . . [Full text]

Pope Francis must defend religious liberty in America

New York Post

Armando Valladares

Thirty years ago, I slid a piece of paper across a table at a secret meeting with the fabled French maritime explorer Jacques Cousteau. In it were dozens of names, all political prisoners in Fidel Castro’s gulags where I spent 22 years of my life. Months later, when Cousteau visited Cuba for research and Castro wanted to scuba dive with him, Cousteau leveraged the release of 80 of those prisoners in exchange. Cousteau used the gift of his fame to change the lives of Cubans for generations to come.

When Pope Francis arrives in the United States this month, he will not barter pictures and backslaps for political prisoners. America is still a nation where its citizens can publicly oppose their political leaders without fear of incarceration. At least for now. But in his unprecedented address to a joint session of Congress, he should protest against the ongoing creation of a new class of prisoners in our society: religious conscientious objectors. [Full Text]

Turning physicians into executioners

National Post

Sean Murphy*

When the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) convenes in Halifax this month for its Annual General Council, delegates will confront what the CMA’s Dr. Jeff Blackmer has called the biggest change in the medical profession in Canada, maybe in centuries: the legalization of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Last year, when announcing the intention of the CMA to intervene in the Carter case at the Supreme Court, Dr. Blackmer and CMA President Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti reflected on what was at stake.

One person’s right is another person’s obligation, and sometimes great burden, they wrote. And in this case, a patient’s right to assisted dying becomes the physician’s obligation to take that patient’s life. . . [Full text]

Odd Wisconsin: Soldier’s conscience trumped direct orders

Wisconsin State Journal

Wisconsin Historical Society

Society depends on people obeying rules for the common good, but sometimes conscience is stronger than conformity.

This happened twice in 1862 to Col. Halbert Paine of Wisconsin’s 4th Cavalry, who disobeyed orders to return fugitive slaves to their owners and to burn the city of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. . .

On June 5, 1862, Paine was ordered to send African-American slaves who’d taken refuge among his troops back to their owners. . . [Full text]

 

Tunnel vision at the College of Physicians

National Post

Sean Murphy* 

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has adopted a policy requiring physicians who have moral or ethical objections to a procedure to make an “effective referral” of patients to a colleague who will provide it, or to an agency that will arrange for it. In 2008, amidst great controversy, the Australian state of Victoria passed an abortion law with a similar provision.

After the law passed, a Melbourne physician, morally opposed to abortion, publicly announced that he had refused to provide an abortion referral for a patient. This effectively challenged the government and medical regulator to prosecute or discipline him. They did not. The law notwithstanding, no one dared prosecute him for refusing to help a woman 19 weeks pregnant obtain an abortion because she and her husband wanted a boy, not a girl.

They obtained the abortion without the assistance of the objecting physician, and they could have done the same in Ontario. College Council member Dr. Wayne Spotswood, himself an abortion provider, told Council that everyone 15 or 16 years old knows that anyone refused an abortion by one doctor “can walk down the street” to obtain the procedure elsewhere.

So why did the College working group that drafted the demand for “effective referral” urge College Council to adopt a policy that so clearly has the potential to make the College look ridiculous? . . .[Full text]