Category: Religion

Why conscience (or lack of it) is in the news

 Globe and Mail

Lorna Dueck

How about a conversation on what’s happening to the human conscience? Pick any variety of headline these days and you’ll often discover that the news behind it happened because somebody’s conscience evaporated.

How could the consciences of 13 young men smart enough to navigate Dalhousie University’s dentistry school not awaken to the way they were denigrating women? How could these students, posting on a social network with a billion users, not care that judgment was imminent? Why was there just one whistle-blower among them?

The best or worst of our collective conscience is usually behind any story that goes viral today. Who is the guardian, the advocate, the instructor, the guide for our conscience? Family, social norms, religion, school and the media are all systems that come quickly to mind when I think about conscience-setting. We need to value sources that teach us to care about conscience, because conscience will always affect how we treat each other. . . [Full Text]

 

Webcast on Ontario Physicians’ Conscience Rights

On February 8 the Catholic Civil Rights League, the Toronto Catholic Doctors’ Guild, and Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute held a seminar/webinar to help you frame your response to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s policy document on professional obligations and human rights.

Ontario policy forcing doctors to have role in abortion will have ‘devastating’ consequences: bishops’ group

Liane Laurence

OTTAWA, February 5, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — A national Catholic organization sponsored by Canada’s bishops has asked Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons to reject a proposed policy that threatens to force doctors into providing abortions and contraceptives in some circumstances.

The draft policy, which is open for public input until February 20, “would severely restrict the rights of conscience of medical practitioners,” and will have “devastating” consequences, the Ottawa-based Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) charged in a February 4 statement. If the College approves the policy, doctors who want to keep their integrity “may be forced” to leave Ontario or to quit medicine altogether, they said, leaving distressed patients behind. . . [Full text]

Freedom to Care: The Threat to Conscience Rights in Medicine

The CMDS web page has additional information on this issue on their web site including posters, newsletter inserts, talking points, instructions on how to access the Colleges and answer their surveys, legal opinions, articles and our brief to the OMA.

The deadlines for public input are looming – Ontario is February 20th, Saskatchewan is March 6.

Please help by spreading the word about their video and resources to your contacts. This might spur more people on to getting involved in this issue and expressing their concerns to the colleges.

Let it be known that freedom of conscience still matters

The Catholic Register

Lucas Vivas

When patients are asked what they want in a doctor, a common response is compassion and integrity. Good doctors follow their convictions in trying to do what is right for their patient, and good doctors should not be separated from their consciences and humanity when caring for others.

Unfortunately, however, the integrity of physicians is under attack by the very organization that is supposed to promote good medicine in Ontario.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), the body that grants licences to physicians to practise in Ontario, plans to drastically restrict the freedom-of-conscience rights of physicians. At present, the CPSO allows doctors to step aside when a patient requests a treatment or procedure that is in conflict with a doctor’s moral or religious beliefs. For example, a Catholic gynecologist could decline to perform abortions. . . [Full text]