Category: Procedures & Services

Colombian Physicians Get the Final Go-Ahead for Euthanasia

18 Years of Legal Limbo Over with New Regulatory Protocol

Pan Am Post

Sabrina Martín

An 18-year wait came to an end on Monday, April 20, when Health Ministry authorities presented guidelines for Colombian doctors to perform euthanasia. The Constitutional Court ordered them to set the protocols in a February decision, after declaring the practice legal all the way back in 1997.

Medical practitioners in the Andean country have routinely refused to support assisted suicide, fearing criminal charges. Even with the court judgment standing, there was simply no regulatory environment. . . the Health Promotion Agency (EPS) is tasked with finding an alternative doctor or health center if the patient’s usual provider refuses to help him die. [Full text]

Abortion plans include conscience clause for staff

Mr. Ford’s abortion proposals contain a conscience clause for employees relating to participation in the procedure.

Belfast News Letter

This would mean that if any health staff had a conscientious or religious objection to abortion, they would not have to directly participate.

Among consultation’s results was the emergence of a “clear body of opinion in favour of a clause to allow for conscientious objection”.

However, the Department of Justice said that it expects this would not apply “where there is a risk to the life of the woman or of injury to her physical or mental health which is likely to be either long term or permanent”. . . [Full text]

 

Alabama House Bill 491 (2015)

Health Care Rights of Conscience Act

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED AN ACT

Relating to health care, to allow health care providers to decline to perform any health care service that violates their conscience and provide remedies for persons who exercise that right and suffer consequences as a result. [Full text]

Northern Ireland abortion law: Legalisation in fatal foetal abnormality cases recommended

BBC

A change to Northern Ireland’s abortion law, allowing terminations in fatal foetal abnormality cases, has been recommended by the Justice Department.

A fatal foetal abnormality diagnosis means doctors believe a baby will die in the womb or shortly after birth.

Justice Minister David Ford said he will ask the Northern Ireland Executive for approval to introduce legislation, which then requires an Assembly vote. . .

. . .On Thursday, the justice committee heard there was substantial support for limited changes to the law, which should also include a conscience clause in the legislation to allow doctors and nurses to opt out of the termination procedure . . . [Full text]

 

Tunnel vision at the College of Physicians

National Post

Sean Murphy* 

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has adopted a policy requiring physicians who have moral or ethical objections to a procedure to make an “effective referral” of patients to a colleague who will provide it, or to an agency that will arrange for it. In 2008, amidst great controversy, the Australian state of Victoria passed an abortion law with a similar provision.

After the law passed, a Melbourne physician, morally opposed to abortion, publicly announced that he had refused to provide an abortion referral for a patient. This effectively challenged the government and medical regulator to prosecute or discipline him. They did not. The law notwithstanding, no one dared prosecute him for refusing to help a woman 19 weeks pregnant obtain an abortion because she and her husband wanted a boy, not a girl.

They obtained the abortion without the assistance of the objecting physician, and they could have done the same in Ontario. College Council member Dr. Wayne Spotswood, himself an abortion provider, told Council that everyone 15 or 16 years old knows that anyone refused an abortion by one doctor “can walk down the street” to obtain the procedure elsewhere.

So why did the College working group that drafted the demand for “effective referral” urge College Council to adopt a policy that so clearly has the potential to make the College look ridiculous? . . .[Full text]