Category: Procedures & Services

UN agencies denounce Mexico for proposed law allowing doctors to opt out of abortion, euthanasia

LifeSite News

Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

April 24, 2018 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Three United Nations agencies are denouncing Mexico’s Senate for passing legislation that will protect the right of medical professionals to abstain from practices for which they have a conscientious objection.

Although the legislation covers any case of conscientious objection by a doctor or nurse, it is regarded as most applicable to medical professionals who do not wish to cooperate with anti-life procedures such as abortion, euthanasia, and sterilization.

The three agencies, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Office in Mexico of the High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights (OHCHR), together denounced the legislation for not requiring conscientious objectors to give referrals to doctors who are willing to carry out the medical practice at issue. . . [Full Text]

Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017

Sean Murphy*

On 19 April, 2018, the legislature of the State of Victoria, Australia, passed the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017, which will come into force in June, 2019.  It is currently the most restrictive euthanasia/assisted suicide (EAS) legislation in the world, running to 130 pages.  In brief, the law authorizes physician assisted suicide for terminally ill adults, but permits euthanasia by physicians only when patients are physically unable to self-administer a lethal drug.  In both cases a permit must be obtained in advance.

Oklahoma Officials Endorse Nitrogen Executions As ‘Humane,’ But Some Medical Experts Aren’t Sure

Stateimpact Oklahoma

Quinton Chandler

Oklahoma wants to go where no state has gone before: Executing death row inmates with nitrogen gas. Officials say nitrogen will bring quick, painless deaths, but the research is slim — and it has never been used in U.S. executions.

The case for nitrogen hypoxia sounds simple. Nitrogen is already in the air we breathe, but, as long as humans get the right mix, nitrogen is safe. The state wants to make death row inmates breathe pure nitrogen.

State Sen. Ervin Yen, R-Oklahoma City, is a cardiac anesthesiologist who signed his name to the bill that made nitrogen hypoxia a legal execution method in 2015. He says the inmates would die from “lack of oxygen,” not exposure to nitrogen. . . [Full text]

Referendum on the Eighth Amendment

Amnesty International demands compulsory referral for abortion

Irish Times (Letter to the Editor)

Colm O’Gorman (Executive DIrector, Amnesty International Ireland

Sir, – Dr Andrew O’Regan (April 14th) has firm views on when health practitioners should be allow to refuse participate in abortion procedures if the referendum is passed. However, the limits he considers a trespass on practitioners’ rights are in fact how conscience-based refusal should be regulated in order to safeguard the patient’s rights too.

There is an important difference between conscientiously objecting to something – we all have a human right to thought, conscience and religion – and being allowed to act on that objection in a way that negatively impacts on others. . .

. . . So, yes, a health professional exercising conscience-based refusal should still have a duty to make a timely referral to another who will provide the service. . . . [Full text]

Tongue splitting, bodily harm, and human dignity

BioEdge

Xavier Symons

Contemporary cosmetic surgery has become a tool for realising bizarre personal fantasies. Sometimes it also leads to significant bodily harm. “Tongue-splitting” is an operation whereby a person’s tongue is split from the tip to as far back as the underside base. The operation has become a common alteration for body-modification enthusiasts, who say it heightens their sense of taste and touch.

Some jurisdictions, however, have enacted a ban on the procedure. The operation can be painful, and can temporarily impede one’s capacity for speech.

In a recent post on the blog Practical Ethics, UK lawyer Charles Foster considers the legality and ethics of the procedure.

Foster discusses the case of R v BM, where a Wolverhampton tattooist was found guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm on a patient after splitting their tongue. Even though the customer consented, the court found that consent was not a defence against having inflicted grievous bodily harm.

Foster argues that the ruling represents a defence of basic human dignity, which transcends the ambit of personal autonomy:

[The ruling] is a salutary reminder that there are limits to the law’s protection of personal autonomy. Factors other than autonomy are in play in the criminal law. I have argued elsewhere that the primary factor (and the foundational factor in the criminal law – in which all other factors, including autonomy, are rooted) is human dignity.

Indeed, Foster argues that in harming another, one does violence to one’s own human dignity:

One might say that X causing injury to Y is doubly culpable because in doing so X outrages not only Y’s dignity but also his own (X’s) dignity…dignity is ‘Janus-faced’.

Tongue splitting, bodily harm, and human dignityThis article is published by Xavier Symons and BioEdge under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation to BioEdge. Commercial media must contact BioEdge for permission and fees.