Category: Religion

Freedom of conscience and religion not a defence

NEWS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

Protection of Conscience Project

Ontario physicians are being advised that they are expected to give up freedom of conscience if they wish to practise medicine in the province. The expectation is set out in “Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code,” a draft policy document from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

The document responds to legislative changes, which, according to the Chair of the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, will see a twenty-fold increase in hearings before the Tribunal – from 150 to 3,000 cases per year.

According to the College, the Tribunal may take action against a physician who refuses to provide or refer for procedures that he finds morally objectionable. The College strongly suggests that the physician’s freedom of conscience and religion will be ignored because “there is no defence for refusing to provide a service” in such circumstances.

In addition to the possibility of prosecution by the Human Rights Tribunal, the College states that it will consider the Human Rights Code in adjudicating complaints of professional misconduct, even though the College admits that it lacks the expertise and authority in human rights.

The College also plans to force objecting physicians to actively assist patients to obtain morally controversial services. A similar demand – that objectors be forced to refer patients for abortion – generated fierce opposition when it appeared in a 2006 guest editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The College posted the draft policy for consultation near the end of June, with a response deadline of 15 August. The Project, noting that there was no news release about the draft and that “the mid-summer timing of the consultation is less than satisfactory,” has asked the College to extend the deadline by 90 days.

“Commentators like Rex Murphy, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant have condemned Canadian human rights commissions for suppressing freedom of expression,” noted Sean Murphy, Administrator of the Protection of Conscience Project. “Perhaps we should not be surprised to see them now being used to suppress freedom of conscience and religion among medical professionals.”

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Cardinal Rigali Urges Congress To Respect Conscience Rights

NEWS RELEASE
Office of Media Relations 08-106
For Immediate Release
July 18, 2008

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Responding to objections to anticipated federal HHS  regulations protecting health care providers’ fundamental rights of conscience,  Cardinal Justin Rigali, chairman of the United States  Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, today wrote to  all members of Congress defending “efforts to reaffirm and implement laws on  conscience protection.”

The New York Times on July 15 reported that it had obtained an alleged draft of regulations soon to be issued  by the Department of Health and Human Services, to clarify and enforce federal  laws on respect for the moral and religious convictions of health care personnel  in programs receiving federal funds.  Pro-abortion organizations and some  members of Congress have already attacked the as-yet-unpublished regulations,  saying they are unwarranted and could limit “access” to abortion and birth  control.

Reacting to these criticisms, Cardinal Rigali said this “should be a  matter of agreement among members who call themselves ‘pro-life’ and  ‘pro-choice’: the freedom of health care providers to serve the public without  violating their most deeply held moral and religious convictions on the sanctity  of human life.”

“Congress has passed numerous laws protecting rights of  conscience in health care, beginning in 1973,” said the Cardinal, and these laws  address sterilization and other issues in addition to abortion.  “The  critics’ surprise that conscience protection may apply beyond the specific issue  of abortion seems based on a lack of knowledge of existing federal law… If the  Administration is preparing regulations along these lines, it would simply be  performing its proper task in an area of law where that is long overdue.”

Cardinal Rigali said the charge that respect for conscience rights undermines  “access” to abortion and other procedures contradicts pro-abortion groups’  longstanding claim that only “a tiny minority of religious zealots” object to  their agenda.  In any case, he said, “patients with pro-life convictions,  including women who require a physician’s care for themselves and their unborn  children during pregnancy, deserve ‘access’ to health care professionals who do  not have contempt for their religious and moral convictions or for the lives of  their children.”

“This issue,” he said, “provides self-described ‘pro-choice’  advocates with an opportunity to demonstrate their true convictions… [I]s the  ‘pro-choice’ label a misleading mask for an agenda of actively promoting and  even imposing morally controversial procedures on those who conscientiously hold  different views?”

The Clash of Universalisms: Religious and Secular in Human Rights

The Hedgehog Review
Fall, 2007

Abdulaziz Sachedina, PhD.*

The major thrust of Islamic critique of the Declaration, however, is its secularism and its implied hostility to divergent philosophical or religious ideas. . . Perhaps the sore point in the secular human rights discourse, as far as Muslim theoreticians of rights language are concerned, is the total dismissal of anything religious as being an impediment to the modern development of human rights. . . .
Full Text

Canadian Pharmacists Association queried by Catholic bishops

The Canadian Pharmacists Association has been asked by the Canadian Organization for Life and Family to ensure that pharmacists disclose to patients the fact that the morning-after pill can cause the death of the early embryo by preventing implantation. COLF, which addresses life issues for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, also asked the Association about its policy on freedom of conscience for pharmacists who do not wish to dispense the morning-after pill. [COLF letter]

When rights collide

© Copyright 2004 Calgary Herald
Reproduced with permission

Nigel Hannaford

A few years ago, a customer asked Co-op pharmacist Maria Bizecki to fill a prescription for an abortion drug. For Bizecki, a Roman Catholic and active pro-lifer, this was akin to being invited to become an accessory to murder. She declined.

It was a risky stand against the prevailing view of pharmaceutical professional associations, and employers retailing drugs. Yet, ultimately it led to a small step forward for Albertans’ religious freedom.

The Alberta College of Pharmacists (ACP), for instance, her profession’s ethics watchdog, emphasizes a client’s right to have pharmaceutical needs met. It grants conscience leeway to its members, though this did not save Bizecki from facing complaints about her stand.

More particularly, the conscience clause is little help to pharmacists dealing with unsympathetic employers.

The letter one Pro-Life Ontario pharmacist got from his boss (quoted in the Pro-Life paper, Interim) eloquently expresses the all-business perspective: “You are not employed by the company to make moral or philosophical decisions about whether birth control is appropriate for the customer . . . we are engaged in a retail activity.”

The letter concluded with a threat of termination, noting that if the pharmacist couldn’t separate his beliefs from his job, he should “think long and hard about whether you could continue in your capacity.”

Co-op was comparatively gentle. Bizecki had been straightforward with them about her views, and was known in the community as a pro-life activist. She was suspended with pay.

She doesn’t talk about the complaints which led to her being investigated by the ACP; the details are subject to her duty of confidentiality. Still, when in 2000, a pro-choice website challenged the conscience rights of pharmacists, the prompt arrival of the first complaint was no surprise.

The situation was a pickle of contending rights and obligations.

Obviously, if a prescribed drug is legal, a client has a right to buy it, and a druggist to sell it. But, only the wilfully blind wouldn’t admit honest people can sincerely disagree over abortion. As employees are not mere instruments of an employer’s will, but have a right of conscience, even an obligation, how does one loosen the tangle?

One way is to choose. When human rights commissions do so, religious freedoms sometimes lose. The case of a Catholic school board
compelled to allow a gay student to bring his boyfriend to a prom, is illustrative.

The other way is negotiation. It took nearly three years for Bizecki’s lawyer, Gerry Chipeur, the college and Co-op to work it out, but there was a happy ending. That is, something which worked for everybody, and it serves as a useful template.

The reasonable accommodation of Bizecki’s principles was a written agreement in which she recognized the public’s right to have a prescription filled by a pharmacist, and that she could not and should not obstruct it. But, employers have a duty to reasonably accommodate employee scruples, and Co-op agreed not to demand she fill prescriptions for drugs which effect abortions. Thus, with the college’s blessing, she would always be part of a two-person dispensary.

Chipeur adds this might not be a reasonable accommodation for a one- person pharmacy: “However, in Canada employers have always had a duty to be reasonable, so long as there’s no undue burden. This is the first time that I’m aware, that there has been such an accommodation. If there’s a similar breakdown in Alberta in the future, it would be unwise for any health employer to not accommodate a pro-life position. I’d just say this to pro-lifers: Don’t take a job in an abortion clinic and then say you don’t want to do abortions.”

What distinguishes this case from some of the head-on rights collisions we’ve seen in Canada, is that the parties would accept a solution, not hold out for a victory. Canada aspires to be a tolerant country.

This is what tolerance looks like.

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