Efforts to support freedom of conscience in health care in Australia have been tarnished by comments made on Facebook posts by a physician identified only as “Dr. K” . The physician became the subject of an investigation and disciplinary hearing after the posts were reported to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. In addition to asserting that he refused to refer for abortions, the physician made several reprehensible remarks. Among them was an assertion that a woman who dies from injuries incurred in a “back alley abortion” deserved to die “for trying to kill her own child.” A physician’s group supporting freedom of conscience in health care issued a statement that it “vehemently disagrees with and utterly repudiates the idea and sentiment that any woman deserves any kind of harm for any reason whatsoever.” [The Age]
Category: Procedures & Services
American activist organization assists with push for expanded abortion law in Ireland
The Center for Reproductive Rights, an American activist organization based in New York, is assisting three women who are approaching the United Nations in an attempt to force Ireland to expand its newly-minted abortion law to include abortion for reasons of foetal abnormality likely to result in the death of the child soon after birth. They are also supported by an Irish “Doctors for Choice” group. [Irish Central] [The Guardian]
Abortion law changes eyed as Dr Mark Hobart probed
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Napthine government is not ruling out changes to Victoria’s abortion laws ahead of an investigation into a doctor who refused to give a couple an abortion referral because they wanted a boy.
The state government said it was interested in the outcome of the Medical Board of Victoria’s investigation into Mark Hobart, a pro-life doctor who has been accused of breaking the state’s abortion laws.
It comes as pro-life advocates run a concerted campaign to repeal a section of the Abortion Law Reform Act, which requires doctors who have a conscientious objection to abortion to refer a woman to someone with no such objection. [Full story]
Australian and New Zealand palliative physicians oppose euthanasia
The Australia and New Zealand Society for Palliative Medicine (ANZSPM) has issued a statement opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide. Statements of this kind indicate that the legalization of the procedures would generate significant conflicts of conscience among members of the medical community.
Belgium considering euthanasia for children
Belgian politicians are debating a bill proposed by the governing Socialist party to legalize euthanasia for children (with parental consent). The bill would also abolish the current 5 year limitation on advance directives for euthanasia in order to make the procedure available to persons with dementia. [ABC News]