Category: ChristianityCatholic

Activist complains that Catholic hospitals won’t facilitate assisted suicide

In an opinion piece published in the Seattle Times, Tom Preston,  a retired physician who was one of the leaders of the successful assisted suicide lobby in Washington State, complains that Catholic hospitals in the state will not facilitate assisted suicide. “Throughout Washington,” he claims, “doctors are being silenced and forced to adhere to religious rules that prevent any participation in death with dignity,” and that “many Washingtonians are denied access to legal and humane end-of-life medical care.”

Writers with a different view of assisted suicide would respond that Catholic hospitals provide “humane end-of life medical care” as well as “death with dignity,” though not assisted suicide.  In any case, the position taken by Preston demonstrates that the legalization of morally contentious procedures like euthanasia and assisted suicide tends to generate political and social pressures inimical to freedom of conscience among health care workers and institutions.

Australian regulator misrepresents physician obligations

Claim that practitioner codes require referral disproved by Australian Medical Association

Sean Murphy*

According to a report in The Examiner, a representative of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Association told a Tasmanian legislative committee that physicians who object to a procedure for reasons of conscience are obliged by professional codes of ethics to refer patients to another physician.  Lisa McIntosh was addressing the Committee concerning a proposed Reproductive Health Bill.

Her assertion is contradicted by a submission by the Australian Medical Association Tasmania, which protested the section of the bill that would force objecting physicians to facilitate morally contested procedures by referral.  The AMA Tasmania submission included quotes from the AMA Code of Ethics and a document from the Medical Board of Australia Good Medical Practice to demonstrate that the draft legislation information paper falsely claimed that there was a duty to refer.

The Committee also heard from Catholic Archbishop Adrian Doyle, whose concerns about the proposed bill included the mandatory referral provision.

 

Doctor-ethicist sees ongoing efforts to weaken conscience protections

Boston Pilot

Peter Finney Jr.

NEW ORLEANS (CNS) — Fine print contained in the Affordable Care Act has weakened conscience protections for physicians who oppose abortion, sterilization or other medical practices on religious or moral grounds, a doctor and ethicist told the American Academy of Fertility Care Professionals.

Dr. John Brehany, executive director and ethicist of the Catholic Medical Association, said with the passage of the new health care law, commonly called Obamacare, “the federal government is posing real threats to faithful health care professionals.”

“While Obamacare itself does have a couple of conscience-protection provisions built in, the fact is, if you look at the big picture, which are the old federal laws and what was achieved from 1973 to 2004, we are now missing some important protections, and we are now vague on how these old laws will carry forward into the future,” Brehany said Aug. 10 during told the academy’s annual gathering in New Orleans. . . . [Full text]

The problem of unregulated conscientious objection

  Sean Murphy*

In late 2010, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) was presented with a report from its Social, Health and Family Affairs Committee expressing deep concern about the problem of “unregulated conscientious objection” in Europe.  The Committee proposed to solve this problem by having states adopt “comprehensive and clear regulations” to address it.

The Council ultimately adopted a resolution that almost completely contradicted the premises of the report, but in 2011 the theme was resurrected by Dr. Leslie Cannold, an Australian ethicist.  Dr. Cannold warned that, “[a]t best, unregulated conscientious objection is an accident waiting to happen,” and, at worst, “a sword wielded by the pious against the vulnerable with catastrophic results.”  It was, she wrote, “a pressing problem from which we can no longer, in good conscience, look away.” . . .[Full text]

 

Irish government signals intention to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortion

Physician recommends expansion of abortion services beyond designated facilities

Quoting an unnamed official of the Irish Department of Health, the Irish Independent has reported that the Irish government intends to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions under the new Irish abortion law.  The official is quoted as saying that the new law provides for conscientious objection for individuals, but the exemption ” does not apply to a hospital.”

The Irish Independent also reports that Dr. Kevin Walsh, a cardiologist at Mater Hospital, Dublin, has said that more hospitals should be designated to provide abortions, as he believes that the obstetric hospitals do not have the resources to manage women who are “pregnant and critically ill with heart disease.”   Abortions in such circumstances would be better provided in acute care hospitals, he said, “on an urgent planned basis rather than immediate emergency basis.”