Category: Ethics

Calgary doctor who won’t prescribe birth control backed by pro-life medical professionals

 LifeSite News

Pete Balinski

CALGARY, Alberta — After a doctor received national flak for refusing to prescribe contraception in a Calgary walk-in clinic, an Alberta pharmacist and a British Columbia doctor have risen to her defense.

“I commend her on her stance and courage,” clinical pharmacist Denis Nawrocki, a member of Pharmacists for Life International, told LifeSiteNews. “She has every professional right to exercise her conscience and keep to her convictions. Congratulations are in order.”

The story broke last week that Dr. Chantal Barry of the Westglen Medical Centre in Calgary does not prescribe ‘the pill’ after one irate woman posted to her Facebook account a picture of a sign on the facility’s front desk.

“Please be informed that the physician on duty today will not prescribe the birth control pill,” the sign reads.

“I was shocked and outraged,” Joan Chand’oiseau, 45, who posted the picture to Facebook, told Postmedia News. “I don’t think her belief system should have any part in my reproductive health.” . . . [Full text]

Should doctors have the right to refuse to prescribe birth control because of their religious beliefs?

CBC Radio

Day 6

Last week Joan Chand’oiseau was outraged to learn that the physician at her Calgary walk-in clinic refused to prescribe birth control because of her religious beliefs. Chand’oiseau’s story broke just after Canada’s largest medical regulator – The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario – announced it would be revisiting its policies on physicians and the Human Rights Code.  We check in with Joan Chand’oiseau, and invite  Margaret Somerville, Director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, and Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, to debate whether doctors should have the right to refuse to treat a patient on religious or moral grounds.

Listen

 

Policy allowing doctors to deny treatment on moral or religious grounds under review

Globe and Mail

Kelly Grant

Doctors who refuse to provide certain treatments on religious or moral grounds must tread delicately or risk trampling human-rights laws, according to the chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which is expected to weigh in soon on a review of professional guidelines for physicians practising in Canada’s largest province.

“First and foremost their job is to provide health-care services to people who require them,” Barbara Hall said. “If [doctors] wish to put forward their own human rights as a barrier to doing that then they may come up against the fact that their rights are not absolute.”

In an interview, Ms. Hall said doctors generally do not enjoy the same legal protections as religious officials – a point her commission underlined to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) when the medical regulator last updated its policy on doctors and the human-rights code in 2008. . . [Full text]

BMA reiterates opposition to assisted dying

The BMA has reiterated its firm opposition to legalising assisted dying in the face of renewed calls for a change in the law.

An editorial in the BMJ today calls for the Assisted Dying Bill championed by Lord Falconer to become law.

BMJ editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee, UK editor Tony Delamothe and patient editor Rosamund Snow argue that people should be able to exercise choice over their lives, which should include how and when they die.

They write: ‘Ultimately, however, this is a matter for Parliament, not doctors, to decide. Let us hope that our timid lawmakers will rise to the challenge.’

The BMJ is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BMA but has editorial independence.

BMA council chair Mark Porter acknowledged there were strongly held views within the medical profession on both sides of the assisted-dying debate.

But he insisted: ‘The BMA remains firmly opposed to legalising assisted dying. This issue has been regularly debated at the BMA’s policy-forming annual conference and recent calls for a change in the law have persistently been rejected.’ . . . [Full text]

Calgary doctor refuses to prescribe birth control due to personal beliefs

CTVNews.ca

Marlene Leung

A Calgary doctor who will not prescribe birth control because she says it goes against her personal beliefs has triggered outrage among patients.

Dr. Chantal Barry will not prescribe birth control pills due to her religious beliefs. When Barry is working as the lone walk-in physician at the Westglen Medical Centre in southwest Calgary, a sign is put up telling patients that they will not be able to get a prescription for contraception that day.

When Joan Chand’oiseau saw the sign, she was shocked and outraged by the policy, which she says is judgemental.

“It contains overt judgement of my choices and my reproductive health,” she told CTV Calgary. “I think that affects everyone in that clinic, regardless of whether or not they’re visiting that doctor.” . . . [Full text]