Category: Abortion

CBC interviewer fails to ask tough questions

Sean Murphy*

A bill has been introduced in the Canadian Senate by Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth to legalize physician assisted suicide and euthanasia.  Bill S-225’s definition of of “assist”  is of particular interest.  It means  “to provide the person with the knowledge or means to commit suicide, or to perform an act with the intent to cause the person’s death.”   Consistent with this, an “assisting physician” is one “who provides assistance” to a patient seeking euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.

This indicates that indirectly facilitating suicide even by providing information for that purpose is equivalent to more direct forms of assistance, like providing a lethal prescription.  Further, it implies that both providing information to facilitate suicide and actually killing someone are of comparable legal or moral significance.  Many physicians and health care workers who object to assisted suicide and euthanasia would agree, and, for that reason, would refuse to refer or otherwise help a patient find someone willing to kill him or assist him in committing suicide.

The point was overlooked during an interview of Senator Ruth by Evan Solomon on CBC Television’s Power and Politics (2 December, 2014).  After discussing the contents of the bill in general terms and asking Senator Ruth about her reasons for introducing it, Solomon raised the issue of conscientious objection:

Evan Solomon:  A doctor might be watching this, and say, you know, “Great piece of legislation. What do you do if, what will you do to me if I don’t want to do this?”

Senator Ruth:  Nothing.  No doctor is coerced to do this, no patient is coerced to do this.  This is about choice.  The choice of doctors who want to assist in it and their protection . . .

Solomon failed to ask the tough questions.  Among them:

  1. If physicians will not be forced to kill patients, will they, nonetheless, be forced to help patients find someone who will?
  2. Why is it that the bill is about the choice and the protection of doctors who want to help to kill patients, and not about the choice and protection of those who refuse?
  3. When abortion was legalized, politicians and activists promised that no physician would be forced to provide abortions, but refused to include a protection of conscience provision in the law.1  Now the College of Physicians of Ontario is proposing a policy that would compel physicians to provide abortions or help  patients obtain them.2  Dr. Marc Gabel, chair of the working group that produced the draft policy, warns that physicians who refuse to do this should get out of family practice.3  As written, the policy could be applied equally to euthanasia and assisted suicide.  Why does Senator Ruth think that objecting physicians will not be coerced – if not sooner, then later?

Notes:

1. Murphy, S.  “Promises, promises.  Canadian law reformers promise tolerance, freedom of conscience:What happens after the law is changed is another story.” Protection of Conscience Project

2. “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, 10 December, 2014

3.  Swan, M.   “Catholics doctors who reject abortion told to get out of family medicine.” The Catholic Register, 17 December, 2014.  (Accessed 2014-12-19)

 

 

Conscientious objection to abortion: Catholic midwives lose in Supreme Court

UK Human Rights Blog

The Supreme Court recently handed down its judgment in an interesting and potentially controversial case concerning the interpretation of the conscientious objection clause in the Abortion Act 1967. Overturning the Inner House of the Court of Session’s ruling, the Court held that two Catholic midwives could be required by their employer to delegate to, supervise and support other staff who were involved in carrying out abortion procedures, as part of their roles as Labour Ward Co-ordinators at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow.

We set out the background to the case and explained the earlier rulings and their ramifications on this blog here and here. The key question the Supreme Court had to grapple with the meaning of the words “to participate in any treatment authorised by this Act to which he has a conscientious objection” in section 4 of the 1967 Act.

The disappearing Article 9 argument

Somewhat frustratingly (at least from the perspective of the writers of a human rights blog!) an argument based around Article 9 of the European Convention – the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion – was not really dealt with by the Supreme Court, despite having been trailed in the earlier court proceedings. Lady Hale JSC, who wrote the judgment with which the other Supreme Court Justices agreed, described the point as a “distraction” . . . [Full text]

 

Proposed policy of Ontario College of Physicians “appalling”

Medscape

Reproduced with permission of the author

Dr. Terence McQuiston, M.D.

Dr. Gabel is not alone in this opinion, but I find it nevertheless appalling. Ever since Hippocrates medical ethics were determined by our profession independently of government legislation (including human rights tribunals). We Canadians stood in judgement at Nuremberg over the German physicians of the Nazi period.

Their defense was that they had done nothing outside of the law (true). However, we took the view that ethics transcend and should inform legislation, not the other way around, and therefore we could hold them to account for their deeds.

Such transcendence of ethics is only possible by the exercise of conscience by all physicians. Granted there may be differences arising from this exercise, but we should do our best to accommodate these differences.

That’s why we permit conscientious objection in wartime. Individual conscience is too precious a part of our social fabric to be casually overridden. The policy defended by Dr. Gabel in effect puts conscience on ice. If euthanasia becomes legal, I for one still won’t do it.

This comment responds to the Medscape article “Doctors opposing draft abortion policy may need to rethink whether family practice is right for them, says CPSO official: Direct referrals a sticking point in Ontario’s human rights policy (17 December, 2014)  Dr. Marc Gabel was quoted to the effect that physicians unwilling to provide or facilitate abortion and contraception should not practice family medicine. Administrator

 

 

Catholic midwives’ abortion ruling overturned by supreme court

 Judges rule against Mary Doogan and Concepta Wood, who brought case objecting to any involvement in abortions

The Guardian

Libby Brooks

The UK’s supreme court has ruled that two Catholic midwives do not have the right to refuse to help other nurses with abortion procedures or planning.

Upholding an appeal by Greater Glasgow health board, the court found that Mary Doogan, 58, and Concepta Wood, 52, who worked as labour ward co-ordinators at the southern general hospital in Glasgow, did not have a legal right to object to helping with abortions in any way.

As conscientious objectors, the senior midwives have had no direct role in pregnancy terminations, but they argued that they should also be entitled to refuse to delegate, supervise and support staff involved in the procedures or providing care to patients during the process.

Reproductive rights campaigners were concerned that a decision by the court of session in Edinburgh in favour of the women’s case last year could have wide-ranging implications for the way the NHS dealt with other health staff who opposed abortions on religious grounds. . . [Full text]

 

Catholics doctors who reject abortion told to get out of family medicine

The Catholic Register

Michael Swan

Catholic doctors who won’t perform abortions or provide abortion referrals should leave family medicine, says an official of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

“It may well be that you would have to think about whether you can practice family medicine as it is defined in Canada and in most of the Western countries,” said Dr. Marc Gabel, chair of the college’s policy working group reviewing “Professional Obligations and Human Rights.”

The Ontario doctor’s organization released a draft policy Dec. 11 that would require all doctors to provide referrals for abortions, morning-after pills and contraception. The revised policy is in response to evolving obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code, Gabel said.

There have been no Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decisions against doctors for failing to refer for abortion or contraception.

Gabel said there’s plenty of room for conscientious Catholics in various medical specialties, but a moral objection to abortion and contraception will put family doctors on the wrong side of human rights legislation and current professional practice. . . [Full text]