As Canada develops its assisted dying legislation, we should be careful to protect health care workers’ right to follow their conscience
Toronto Star
“Contemplating Suicide? We Can Help!” There was a time when such an advertisement pointed to a crisis line, where someone was standing by to counsel you and offer hope in a situation of intolerable pain.
We are in a very different time, now. In a few short months, assisted suicide, its grim reality hidden behind blandly deceptive terms like “medical assistance in dying,” will be declared an acceptable option in our country, enshrined in law. As the federal government prepares legislation to implement the Supreme Court’s decision, it is crucial to consider the effects of this fundamental change in our laws.
Death comes to us all – sometimes suddenly, and sometimes slowly. Although patients benefit from medication that controls pain, they are fully justified in refusing burdensome and disproportionate treatment that serves only to prolong the inevitable process of dying. But dying is simply not the same as being killed. We are grateful for physicians and nurses and others who offer medical assistance to patients who are dying, but it is never justified for them to kill a patient. . .[Full text]
In the first week of September, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) was reported to be “seeking ‘clarity'” about whether or not physicians who perform euthanasia should misrepresent the medical cause of death, classifying death by lethal injection or infusion as death by natural causes. The question arose because the Quebec College of Physicians was said to be “considering recommending” that Quebec physicians who provide euthanasia should declare the immediate cause of death to be an underlying medical condition, not the administration of the drugs that actually kill the patient.1 In fact, the Collège des médecins du Québec and pharmacy and nursing regulators in the province had already made the decision. In August, the three regulators issued a Practice Guide directing Quebec physicians to falsify death certificates in euthanasia cases.
The physician must write as the immediate cause of death the disease or morbid condition which justified [the medical aid in dying] and caused the death. It is not a question of the manner of death (cardiac arrest), but of the disease, accident or complication that led to the death. The term medical aid in dying should not appear on this document.2
Lawyer Jean Pierre Ménard correctly observed that Quebec’s euthanasia law does not require physicians to report euthanasia on death certificates.1 M. Ménard is an expert on euthanasia law consulted by the Quebec government and the CMA,3 but he seems unaware of guidelines relevant to the classification of deaths and medico-legal death investigations. . . [Full text]
The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) draft framework, Principles Based Approach to Assisted Dying in Canada presumes that physicians have an obligation to kill patients or help them commit suicide in the circumstances described by the Supreme Court of Canada in Carter v. Canada. It claims that objecting physicians are obliged to support physicians who do so, and to facilitate their work. By presuming these contested obligations as normative, the framework imposes a structure for response and discussion that is prejudicial to objecting physicians.
CMA officials define “participation” in the draft framework to mean only providing a lethal injection or writing a lethal prescription, although this is not stated in the document. Referral is not counted as “participation,” and the draft framework appears to reflect the view that referral is the preferred method for reconciling conflicts between patients seeking euthanasia or assisted suicide and physicians unwilling to be involved with homicide or suicide. This introduces a fundamental structural bias in framing the CMA approach to accommodating freedom of conscience and religion.
The bias in favour of mandatory referral becomes particularly evident in Schedule B, which considers only compulsory referral as a means of reconciling freedom of conscience and access to services. Further, the structural bias is reflected and reinforced by numerous erroneous and substantially misleading statements.
What support might be offered to physicians unwilling to provide or facilitate euthanasia and assisted suicide is conditional upon their referring the patient to a third party, but the formulation in the draft framework is insufficiently clear and has been compromised by revisions to fundamental principles. An acceptable policy will not require objecting physicians to become part of a chain of causation culminating in a morally contested procedure.
Despite the bias apparent in the draft framework, it should be possible to reconcile respect for the fundamental freedoms of physicians and demands for access to morally contested services. This can be done within the framework proposed by the CMA in the manner suggested in this commentary..
Tristan Bronca writes, “Belief without evidence is becoming incompatible with scientific sensibilities.”1
This notion might be exemplified by Dr. James Downar. Advocating for physician assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canadian Family Practice, he described himself as “a secular North American who supports individual autonomy, subject only to limitations that are justifiable on the basis of empirically provable facts.”2
Dr. Downar’s “Yes” was opposed by Dr. Edward St. Godard’s “No.”3 Since both are palliative care specialists, their differences on the acceptability of physician assisted suicide and euthanasia are not explained by differences in their clinical experience, but by their different moral or ethical beliefs.
However, neither Dr. Downar’s beliefs nor Dr. St. Godard’s can be justified “on the basis of empirically provable facts.” Nor can Dr. Downar’s support for individual autonomy, since empirical evidence demonstrates the primacy of human dependence and interdependence – not autonomy. Empirical evidence can provide raw material needed for adequate answers to moral or ethical questions, but it cannot answer them. As Dr. McCabe told Tristan Bronca, science is necessary – but not sufficient. Moral decision-making requires more than facts.
And the practice of medicine is an inescapably moral enterprise. Every time they provide a treatment, physicians implicitly concede its goodness; they would not otherwise offer it. This is usually unnoticed because physicians habitually conform to standards of medical practice without adverting to the beliefs underpinning them. Hence, the demand that physicians must not be allowed to act upon beliefs is unacceptable because it is impossible; one cannot act morally without reference to beliefs.
But Tristan Bronca asks specifically about whether or not religious beliefs belong in medical practice in a secular society. On this point, the Supreme Court of Canada is unanimous: “Yes.”
“Everyone has ‘belief’ or ‘faith’ in something, be it atheistic, agnostic or religious,” Mr. Justice Gonthier wrote in Chamberlain v. Surrey School District No. 36. “To construe the ‘secular’ as the realm of the ‘unbelief’ is therefore erroneous.”
“Why,” he asked, “should the religiously informed conscience be placed at a public disadvantage or disqualification? To do so would be to distort liberal principles in an illiberal fashion and would provide only a feeble notion of pluralism.”4
Thus, to argue that a “secular” society excludes religious belief perpetuates an error that contributes significantly to climate of anti-religious intolerance.
Public funding of services is beneficial for patients, but quite distinct from physician obligations. After all, physicians provide many kinds of elective surgery and health services that are not publicly funded, and physicians are not paid for publicly funded services that they do not provide. Besides, our secular society taxes both religious and non-religious believers, so both have equal claims on “public dollars.”
Most important, public funding does not prove that a procedure is morally or ethically acceptable, any more than public funding proves that force-feeding prisoners in Guantanamo Bay is acceptable. Perhaps that point will come up in military proceedings against a navy nurse who refused orders to do so.5
4. Chamberlain v. Surrey School District No. 36 [2002] 4 S.C.R. 710 (SCC), para. 137 (Accessed 2014-08-03). “Madam Justice McLachlin, who wrote the decision of the majority, accepted the reasoning of Mr. Justice Gonthier on this point thus making his the reasoning of all nine judges in relation to the interpretation of ‘secular.’” Benson I.T., “Seeing Through the Secular Illusion” (July 29, 2013). NGTT Deel 54 Supplementum 4, 2013 (Accessed 2018-03-07).
In 2008, when the Council of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario was considering the final draft of an earlier policy, Physicians and the Human Rights Code, a member of the Council seems to have been troubled by the policy direction being given to the Colllege by the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC).
Speaking during the Council meeting, he drew his colleagues’ attention to a chilling New England Journal of Medicine article by Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel: “Without conscience.”1 It was about the crucial role played by German physicians in supporting Nazi horrors. “How can we explain their betrayal?” Wiesel asked. “What gagged their conscience? What happened to their humanity?”2
Now, however, to the applause of the OHRC,3 the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has approved a policy to gag the consciences of physicians in the province,4 and Saskatchewan is next in line.5 We may soon begin to discover the answers to Wiesel’s questions.
There is no duty to do what is believed to be wrong.
Policies like those adopted in Ontario and proposed in Saskatchewan are incoherent because they purport to include a duty to do what one believes to be wrong in a code of ethics or ethical guidelines, the very purpose of which is to encourage physicians to act ethically and avoid wrongdoing.
Beyond this, when discussion about difficulties associated with the exercise of freedom of conscience in health care is repeatedly characterized as “the problem of conscientious objection,”6 it becomes clear that the underlying premise is that people and institutions ought to do what they believe to be wrong, and that refusal to do what one believes to be wrong requires special justification. This is exactly the opposite of what one would expect. Most people believe that we should not do what we believe to be wrong, and that refusing to do what we believe to be wrong is the norm. It is wrongdoing that needs special justification or excuse, not refusing to do wrong.
The inversion is troubling, since “a duty to do what is wrong” is being advanced by those who support the “war on terror.” They argue that there is, indeed, a duty to do what is wrong, and that this includes a duty to kill non-combatants and to torture terrorist suspects.7 The claim is sharply contested,8 but it does indicate how far a duty to do what is wrong might be pushed. In Quebec, in Ontario and in Saskatchewan it is now being pushed as far as requiring physicians to participate in killing patients, even if they believe it is wrong: even if they believe that it is homicide.9
This reminder is a warning that the community must be protected against the temptation to give credence to the dangerous idea that is now being advanced by medical regulators in Canada: that a learned or privileged class, a profession or state institutions can legitimately compel people to do what they believe to be wrong – even gravely wrong – and punish them if they refuse.
Forcing someone to do wrong is a violation of humanity, not a limitation of freedom.
Attempts to suppress freedom of conscience and religion in the medical profession are often defended using a statement of the Supreme Court of Canada: “the freedom to hold beliefs is broader than the freedom to act on them.”10
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The statement is not wrong, but it is inadequate. It is simply not responsive to many of the questions about the exercise of freedom of conscience that arise in a society characterized by a plurality of moral and political viewpoints and conflicting demands. More refined distinctions are required. One of them is the distinction between perfective and preservative freedom of conscience, which reflects the two ways in which freedom of conscience is exercised: by pursuing apparent goods and avoiding apparent evils.11
It is generally agreed that the state may limit the exercise of perfective freedom of conscience if it is objectively harmful, or if the limitation serves the common good. Although there may be disagreement about how to apply these principles, and restrictions may go too far, no polity could long exist without restrictions of some sort on human acts, so some limitation of perfective freedom of conscience is not unexpected.
If the state can legitimately limit perfective freedom of conscience by preventing people from doing what they believe to be good, it does not follow that it is equally free to suppress preservative freedom of conscience by forcing them to do what they believe to be wrong. There is a significant difference between preventing someone from doing the good that he wishes to do and forcing him to do the evil that he abhors.
We have noted the danger inherent in the notion of a “duty to do what is wrong.” Here we add that, as a general rule, it is fundamentally unjust and offensive to suppress preservative freedom of conscience by forcing people to support, facilitate or participate in what they perceive to be wrongful acts; the more serious the wrongdoing, the graver the injustice and offence. It is a policy fundamentally opposed to civic friendship, which grounds and sustains political community and provides the strongest motive for justice. It is inconsistent with the best traditions and aspirations of liberal democracy, since it instills attitudes more suited to totalitarian regimes than to the demands of responsible freedom.
This does not mean that no limit can ever be placed on preservative freedom of conscience. It does mean, however, that even the strict approach taken to limiting other fundamental rights and freedoms is not sufficiently refined to be safely applied to limit freedom of conscience in its preservative form. Like the use of potentially deadly force, if the restriction of preservative freedom of conscience can be justified at all, it will only be as a last resort and only in the most exceptional circumstances.
None of these conditions have been met in Ontario or in Saskatchewan.
1. Email to the Administrator, Protection of Conscience Project, from P__ H__ (present at College Council meeting 18 September, 2008) (2014-02-11, 10:10 am)
2. Wiesel E. “Without Conscience.” N Engl J Med 352;15 april14, 2005 (Accessed 2014-02-24)
3. Letter from the Office of the Chief Commissioner, Ontario Human Rights Commission, to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, dated 19 February, 2015, Re CPSO Draft Policy: Professional Obligations and Human Rights
7. Gardner J. “Complicity and Causality,” 1 Crim. Law & Phil. 127, 129 (2007). Cited in Haque, A.A. “Torture, Terror, and the Inversion of Moral Principle.”New Criminal Law Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 613-657, 2007; Workshop: Criminal Law, Terrorism, and the State of Emergency, May 2007. (Accessed 2014-02-19)
8. Haque, A.A. “Torture, Terror, and the Inversion of Moral Principle.”New Criminal Law Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 613-657, 2007; Workshop: Criminal Law, Terrorism, and the State of Emergency, May 2007. (Accessed 2014-02-19)
9. Quebec has already passed a law purporting to legalize euthanasia: Murphy S. “Redefining the Practice of Medicine- Euthanasia in Quebec, Part 9: Codes of Ethics and Killing.”Protection of Conscience Project, July, 2014. The Supreme Court of Canada has ordered legalization of physician assisted suicide and physician administered euthanasia. When the ruling takes effect in early 2016, the Ontario and Saskatchewan policies, as written, will have the effect of forcing physicians unwilling to kill patients or help them kill themselves to find a colleague willing to do so.
In the first week of September, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) was reported to be “seeking ‘clarity'” about whether or not physicians who perform euthanasia should misrepresent the medical cause of death, classifying death by lethal injection or infusion as death by natural causes. The question arose because the Quebec College of Physicians was said to be “considering recommending” that Quebec physicians who provide euthanasia should declare the immediate cause of death to be an underlying medical condition, not the administration of the drugs that actually kill the patient.
