Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
Statistics Canada has confirmed that 491 babies survived abortions in Canada between 2000 and 2009 and then died. [Lifesite News] This is consistent with confirmed reports of the abandonment of infants following abortion [Did Someone Try to Murder Ximena?] and distress caused to objecting health care personnel [Down the Slope to Infanticide].
Irish Health minister James Reilly announced that the Irish government will decide upon a regulatory scheme for abortion in Ireland by the end of the year, and implement it in 2013. [Irish News]
Lawyer Julie Kay, who won a judgement at the European Court of Human Rights against Ireland’s ban on abortion, argues that restrictions on abortion related to the life or health of the mother are unacceptable. “There are,” she writes, “no guidelines for doctors on the distinction between a medical procedure necessary to preserve a woman’s life versus a procedure that would merely protect her health.” She describes this distinction as “bogus.” [Slate]
In a long-awaited report, a panel appointed by the Irish government to study the operation of the abortion law in Ireland has stated the government is obliged to provide guidelines that establish how women in Ireland can obtain abortions consistent with Irish law. It recommends that a physician who objects to abortion for reasons of conscience should be forced to facilitate the procedure by referring a patient to a willing colleague, and to provide an abortion “when the risk of death is imminent and inevitable.” The report is not clear on the extent to which conscientious objection might be allowed to other health care workers. [Report, p. 42, 6.9]
The House of Assembly in the Parliament of South Australia has passed the Advanced Care Directives Bill (2012), which defines medical treatment and health care so as to include nutrition and hydration, and makes it possible for nutrition and hydration to be refused or denied even to patient who isnot dying. The protection of conscience provision in the bill requires objectors to facilitate the withdrawal of food and fluids by providing contact information for someone willing to do so, and to refer the patient to that person if requested. The bill also allows patient directives to override denominational or institutional codes of conduct governing the delivery of health care. [The Australian]