Montreal Gazette
One out of two doctors who have turned down requests for medical assistance in dying by terminally-ill patients have probably done so without justification under the Quebec law, says the head of the province’s commission on end-of-life care.
“It’s 50-50,” Dr. Michel Bureau told the Montreal Gazette in an interview. “Are there some doctors who are too strict in the application of the criteria? We have observed this (attitude) in several cases.”
Despite the progress made in implementing the so-called dying with dignity law, some physicians continue to resist carrying out assisted dying, although in fewer numbers than when the legislation came into effect on Dec. 10, 2015, Bureau added. . . . [Full text]
Canadian doctors who object to directly causing the death of their patients, once the near-totality of the profession, have since the enactment of laws permitting “medical assistance in dying” suddenly become outliers. Polling data is unclear, polls are often biased, and there is no doubt that the euthanasia lobby had the ear of media, opinion leaders and politicians long before we knew what they were up to. Be that as it may, we are now told that euthanasia/MAiD is an accepted ‘medical treatment’ that must be provided to those who request it. Many provincial medical colleges, though not requiring doctors to euthanize patients themselves, do expect, to different degrees, that we facilitate their being euthanized by someone else. . . [