Category: Ethical Commentary

Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario

Gift of Life Fertility Care Centre

Dear CPSO Members,

I teach women and couples how to understand and track their fertility using the Creighton Model FertilityCare™ System. I am writing in response to the review of your policy about Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Several articles by major news outlets have documented the inconvenience experienced by a woman who wanted to get the birth-control pill only to find that the doctor on staff did not prescribe it. Despite attempts by these outlets to make it more than this, ultimately “inconvenience” is the right word for what this woman experienced. She lost, maybe, 30 minutes of her time going to another clinic.

What has been played up by these news outlets as an inconceivable travesty is common fare for the women who are my clients. I work with women who, in contrast to women who use the Pill, believe their fertility to be health, not disease, and therefore use methods of family planning based on their natural cycle. These women want to work with doctors who will treat their reproductive and gynaecological issues in accord with this mindset. Many of the women I have worked with would be glad if the worst thing that happened to them in their attempt to find such a doctor was a 30 minute detour to a different clinic. A significant number of my clients make regular 3 to 6 hour trips, each way, to see a doctor who will respect their decision to work with their fertility versus seeing it as a disease. Some have even travelled from other provinces, paying not only for travel but also hotel rooms and lost days of work.

To my knowledge, the woman in the above mentioned news articles never even interacted with a doctor. She was never judged for wanting the Pill, never pressured to get off of it, or never told she should be doing something else. In contrast, here are some of the things that women using natural methods have dealt with:

  1. More than once, a woman’s physician has pressured her to go on the Pill, despite her clearly telling her physician that she does not want that, after she has chosen to get pregnant and given birth. [Please note: “chosen” is the best word, as my experience in practice matches with the published method effectiveness for the Creighton Model of 99.5% to avoid pregnancy.)
  2. In one instance, an OBGYN was so insistent that a women use non-natural methods of family planning that she felt the need to get a letter from her lawyer before her scheduled C-section as she feared the OBGYN would tie her tubes.

In addition, clients have experienced ignorance, scorn, and downright rudeness from physicians who, horribly informed about modern methods of Natural Family Planning, chastise them for using the “Rhythm” method or no method at all.

This lack of respect for my clients’ desires is seen not only with their choice for family planning but also with their approach to pregnancy:

  1. A woman struggling from multiple miscarriages shared with me how callous her physician was in response to her distress regarding her most recent miscarriage; for him, loosing multiple unborn children was no big deal and he felt it should also be for her.
  2. A couple, given a potential negative prenatal diagnosis was repeatedly pressured by their physician to abort despite the couple telling the physician that they were morally opposed to abortion.

Finally women who are looking for real answers to their reproductive and gynaecological health issues, as opposed to suppressive/destructive approaches like the Pill, have sometimes found Pill-prescribing physicians more “dogmatic” than any of the physicians the media decided to highlight who do not prescribe the Pill. A number of my clients have been told by these Pill-prescribing physicians that the Pill was the only option to their problems. In case you were wondering, the Pill was not the only medical answer, as all of them have subsequently found out.

I find it ironic that, given the ubiquitous presence of the Pill and the ease at which hormonal contraception can be found – not only in private medical practice, but at any Public Health Unit or Family Planning Clinic – that the story of one woman’s inconvenience became national news. Meanwhile, the women that I work with continue to quietly accept the difficult and costly efforts they go to to find physicians who will work with them. These women are equally deserving of having physicians, such as those who only prescribe natural methods for family planning. Any attempt by the CPSO to change its referral policy and thus force such physicians out of practice is a clear statement by the CPSO that some women – particularly those who take the Pill – are more equal than others.

Gift of Life FertilityCare TM Centre,
Ottawa, Ontario

Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario

Dr. Marc Gabel
President
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario
80 College Street
Toronto, Ontario
MSG 2E2

Dear Dr. Gabel:

Re: Policy Review ‘Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code’

As the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario prepares to review its policy on physicians and the human rights code, we are deeply disturbed by the many negative voices that have been urging the College to force doctors to “check their ethics at the door”. It should be obvious that now, only weeks after Quebec legalized euthanasia, we have arrived at the worst possible time in Canadian history to turn doctors into mere mechanics whose duty is to blindly do the bidding of their clients.

With euthanasia legal in Canada’s second-largest province, the debate about euthanasia and assisted suicide on the national level and in other provinces will only intensify. It is crucial that we preserve the right of our doctors to refuse to participate in such services even if they are legal.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide continue to be regarded as deeply unethical by many world religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

What is legal is no longer necessarily moral, and we would be unwise to place all our trust in the law as our shield, or to train our doctors to disregard their own ethical limits. Indeed, the properly formed conscience of our physicians may sometimes be the last moral and ethical boundary that protects us and provides us with life-affirming options and alternatives that respect our human dignity.

Canadians pride themselves on being a society made up of many cultures, religions and ethnicities. The freedom and democracy that underpin our pluralist society lead us to affirm the right of all citizens to participate fully in roles of leadership and the professional life, including the medical profession.  Any policy that would require doctors to contravene their consciences and to breach their most deeply held values would be outrageously exclusionary and unacceptable, as it would chase out of medicine those principled physicians who refuse to violate the central teachings of many of our largest and most ancient religions. For such doctors, referral for actions that they believe to be contrary to their medical judgement, ethical principles and religious beliefs would be as unacceptable as providing them, as it would be tantamount to outright cooperation with the action in question.

We refuse to believe that this is the kind of Canada that any of us would want to live in. The freedom of conscience is a basic human right recognized by many international agreements and protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is essential to a truly democratic society and foundational for the protection of all other human rights, including the freedom of religion.

As such, we strongly encourage the College, as it reviews its policy on this matter, to continue to protect an authentic freedom of conscience for all physicians. No Canadian citizen, including any physician, should ever be disciplined or risk losing their professional standing for conducting their work in conformity with their most deeply held ethical or religious convictions.

Sincerely yours,

Rabbi Reuben Bulka
Congregation Machzikei Hadas, Ottawa

Terrence Prendergast, S.J.
Archbishop of Ottawa

Imam Sarni Metwally
Ottawa Main Mosque

CC:
President of the Ontario Medical Association
President of the Canadian Medical Association
President of the College of Family Physicians of Canada

Redefining the Practice of Medicine- Euthanasia in Quebec, Part 9: Codes of Ethics and Killing

Abstract

Redefining the Practice of Medicine- Euthanasia in Quebec, Part 9: Codes of Ethics and KillingRefusing to participate, even indirectly, in conduct believed to involve serious ethical violations or wrongdoing is the response expected of physicians by professional bodies and regulators.  It is not clear that Quebec legislators or professional regulators understand this.

A principal contributor to this lack of awareness – if not actually the source of it – is the Code of Ethics of the Collège des médecins, because it requires that physicians who are unwilling to provide a service for reasons of conscience help the patient obtain the service elsehere. The President of the Collège was pleased that law will allow physicians to shift responsibilty for finding someone willing to kill a patient to a health system administrator, avoiding an anticipated problem caused by the requirement for referral in the Code of Ethics.  However, the law does not displace the demand for referral in the Code, and can be interpreted to support it.

The Collège des médecins Code of Ethics demand for referral conflicts with the generally accepted view of culpable indirect participation.  Despite this, it continues to be used as a paradigm by other  professions, notably pharmacy.  It is thus not surprising that the College of Pharmacists also anticipates difficulty over the issue of referral.  Like the Collège des médecins, the College of Pharmacists would like to avoid these problems by allowing an objecting pharmacist to shift responsibility for obtaining lethal drugs to a health systems administrator.

Nurses cannot be delegated the task of killing a patient, it is not unreasonable to believe that nurses may be asked to participate in euthanasia in other ways. Thus, there remain concerns about indirect but morally significant participation in killing.  Their Code of Ethics imposes a duty to ensure both continuity of care and “treatment,” which is to include euthanasia.  However, under ARELC, an objecting nurse is required to ensure only continuity of care.  This should not be interpreted to require nurses to participate in euthanasia, though they may be pressured to do so.

As a general rule, it fundamentally unjust and offensive to human dignity to require 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 was a serious error to include this a requirement in code of ethics for Quebec physicians and pharmacists. The error became intuitively obvious to the Collège des médecins and College of Pharmacists when the subject shifted from facilitating access to birth control to facilitating the killing of patients.

A policy of mandatory referral of the kind found in the Code of Ethics of the Collège des médecins  is not only erroneous, but dangerous.  It establishes the priniciple that people can be compelled to do what they believe to be wrong – even gravely wrong – and punish them if they refuse.  It purports to entrench  a ‘duty to do what is wrong’ in medical practice, including a duty to kill or facilitate the killing of patients. To hold that the state or a profession can compel someone to commit or even to facilitate what he sees as murder is extraordinary.

Quebec’s medical establishment can correct the error by removing the mandatory referral provisions of their codes of ethics that nullify freedom of conscience.  This would prevent objecting physicians and pharmacists from being cited for professional misconduct for refusing to facilitate euthanasia or disciplined for refusing to facilitate other procedures to which they object for reasons of conscience, including contraception and abortion.  This would almost certainly antagonize consumers who have been conditioned to expect health care workers to set aside moral convictions.

It remains to be seen whether the Quebec medical establishment will maintain the erroneous provisions, preferring to force objecting health care workers to become parties to homicide rather than risk occasionally inconveniencing people, such as the young Ontario woman and her supporters who were outraged because she had to drive around the block to obtain The Pill. [Full Text]

One Conscientious Objector at Gitmo Is Great – But It’s Not Enough

Vice News

Natasha Lennard

The international medical community has long maintained an ethical line against force-feeding. As infectious disease specialist Kent Sepkowitz has written, “Without question, it is the most painful procedure doctors routinely inflict on conscious patients… The procedure is, in a word, barbaric.”

Yet in Guantanamo Bay, it is daily procedure for a reported 18 hunger striking detainees. Every day medical professionals watch strapped-down inmates gasp, gag, and choke with streaming eyes as rubber tubes are snaked through sensitive nasal passages into empty stomachs. Despite urging from institutions including the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine, Gitmo prison medical staff continue to participate, all of them just following orders. All but one. [Full text]

O Canada, Glorious and Free!

Canadian Healthcare Network

Reproduced with permission

Cristina Alarcon

The wrath of the media has fallen upon a handful of doctors—most recently a female Calgary practitioner—for politely informing their patients (as per College requirements) that they will not prescribe the pill.

Nevermind that there is no lack of doctors or clinics within a short distance who will comply. Ah, the politics of birth control!

The most recent attack comes from a retired ob/gyn who appears to have forgotten the lyrics of our beloved anthem (See O Canada! We must stand on guard for women’s reproductive rights).

Where is the glorious and free?

Forgotten is the reality that we live in a pluralistic, democratic society, and that true Canadian liberalism disagrees with the dogmatic view that all must think alike.

To force a doctor to act against his conscience is to open wide the doors to state-controlled medicine

Should freedom of conscience and religious belief not be protected in a liberal democracy? Should a woman’s so-called reproductive rights trump the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by our Canadian Charter (see section 2 [a]).

As well stated by blogger Brian Lilly, only a revisionist such as Trudeau Jr. would twist the words of his own father to claim that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was meant to grant women abortion rights.

But no matter what your stance on abortion, there are certain rights without which society as we know it would cease to be.

Thus, the rights of freedom of conscience and religion are inalienable and universal.

They derive from the unique dignity of the human person and constitute the bedrock on which all other human rights rest—the foundation of every truly free society.

No need to remind ourselves that the suppression of these rights contributed to the most gruesome monstrosities ever carried out by otherwise good doctors under the Nazi regime.

To his credit, the ob/gyn who wrote the O Canada piece does defend the wearing of turbans and openness to diversity. He also wisely states that if one is moral, one does not deliberately harm.

But to harm the conscience of people by forcing them to participate in something they find deplorable, even if legal, is to break the very fabric of society.

It would force doctors to kill patients if that were legal; it would force them to prescribe the newest medical fad diet pills; it would force those who (for non-religious reasons) don’t believe in pumping women with exogenous hormones to do so, no matter what the known cancer and other health risks.

And to force a doctor to act against his conscience is to open wide the doors to state-controlled medicine, reducing the professional to a well-paid, educated puppet-on-a-string.

Cristina Alarcon is a Vancouver pharmacist and writer. She holds a master’s degree in bioethics.