Category: Contraception

Doctors’ conscience rights under attack in birth control debate

One physician threatens to give up his practice rather than kill patients

BC Catholic

Deborah Gyapong

Doctors who refuse to prescribe birth control pills have become the focus of a debate over physicians’ rights to freedom of conscience and religion when practising medicine.

An Alberta doctor has been in the media spotlight recently for posting a notice at the clinic where she works she will not prescribe the pill and now faces a human rights complaint. Earlier this year, three Ottawa doctors came under fire for similar reasons. The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO) is doing a public consultation on its guidelines that could be revamped to restrict doctors’ rights to abstain from legal medical practices on religious or conscientious grounds.

For Dr. Howie Bright, past president of the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians’ Societies (CFCPS), the attack on birth control is a “fairly discrete target because it sounds weird that a modern doctor” would not prescribe contraception and is likely to “generate reaction.” [Full text]

Are we willing to make doctors into mere robots?

 LifeSite News

Reproduced with permission

Lea Singh

Some years ago I filled out a prescription for Yasmin, a birth control pill that is often prescribed, as in my case, to control acne for young women. Luckily the warning label scared me enough that I ended up throwing those pills in the garbage. I felt a bit foolish but followed my gut against the assurances of my doctor, who considered those pills the equivalent of Tylenol.

He was wrong. Yasmin made headlines last year when it was linked, together with another birth control pill, to the deaths of 23 women in Canada. This February the European Medicines Agency also admitted that the blood clot risks of Yasmin and similar newer birth control pills are much greater than previously thought.

The EMA’s statement came on the heels of a French report showing that about 20 French women per year died between 2000 and 2011 as a result of fatal blood clots from such ‘third-generation’ pills. All British physicians have now been ordered to warn their patients about the potentially fatal risk of blood clots associated with these pills.

But all this is apparently not enough. Nor is it enough that the World Health Organization has classified oral contraceptives as “carcinogenic to humans.”

It may never be enough for certain people, like Konrad Yakabuski of The Globe and Mail who recently criticized three Ottawa doctors for refusing to prescribe or refer for artificial contraception, saying: “The safety and effectiveness of popular government-approved contraceptives is not generally considered a matter of ‘medical judgment’ these days.”

Tell that to the families of the women who died on Yasmin, Mr. Yakabuski. The truth is, scientists are still studying the risks associated with our methods of artificial birth control, and the drugs that are legal and seemingly safe today might be history tomorrow.

Family doctors are often the first ones to see the red flags, and they should be free to stick to their medical judgements. After my Yasmin scare, I want doctors like that – doctors who haven’t been silenced by fear of feminist backlash, who dare to refuse to pump dangerous chemicals into my body. Such doctors might make me think twice about asking for that chemical cocktail, and they could save my life.

But medical judgement is not the only good reason why doctors might refuse to prescribe or refer. We should never require doctors to participate in treatments that would leave them feeling like they (sometimes quite literally) just killed a baby.

Why would we want to crush and destroy the spirit of our doctors by forcing them to cooperate with what they believe to be deeply wrong?

Here’s why: because the technical abilities of medicine have outgrown the moral limits of most world religions, and many people now feel entitled to treatments that their doctors might find abhorrent.

So the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is reviewing their policy on the freedom of doctors to refuse to provide or refer for treatments that violate their deepest moral and religious convictions.

Are we willing to make doctors into mere robots who won’t be allowed to question, much less refuse, our ethically precarious requests? Some people argue that since doctors work on the public dime, they should be like medical vending machines that dispense any legal service on demand.

But if we strip our doctors of their conscience in order to do our bidding, here’s the price we pay. First, expect an exodus of principled doctors from the profession. We’ll be chasing away the very doctors who might protect us most, those who are willing to take a stand against bad medicine. Not to mention that practising Christians, among others, will effectively be barred from applying to medical schools.

Second, we will be left with doctors who are either willing to do things they consider unethical, or who have few ethical limits to begin with. I get creepy visions of the darkest moments of history repeating, as we find one day that nothing remains to protect us from those same doctors when we are weak and vulnerable.

With euthanasia knocking on Ontario’s door from neighbouring Quebec, now would be a good time to think about how personal ethics and integrity should be valued, not discouraged in our physicians.

Conscience rights for Ontario doctors may be on chopping block again

LifeSite News

Pete Balinski

Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons is looking to update its policy on whether or not a doctor can refuse treatments on religious or moral grounds. The move has life and family advocates concerned doctors may be forced to violate their moral convictions when serving a patient, including one day being forced to participate in or refer for abortion and euthanasia.

“It is dangerous to ask anyone to set aside moral convictions. The greater the power and influence of the person involved, the more dangerous it is,” Sean Murphy, administrator of the Canada-based Protection of Conscience Project, told LifeSiteNews.

The College’s policy review comes at a time when mainstream media has highlighted a number of stories about women complaining that doctors would not prescribe birth control pills, either because of a medical judgment, ethical concerns, or religious beliefs. The reports have consistently sided with the pill-seeking women over the doctors. . . .[Full text]

Philippines: Church encourages conscientious objection to contraception

The country’s bishops have issued a document recalling that abortion has not been legitimized and that a person’s right to life is still inviolable

Vatican Insider | Lastampa

Paolo Affatato

Conscientious objection is the best way to defy the Reproductive health bill in December 2012 which the Supreme Court officially approved last April. After Parliament approved the controversial provision in December 2012, despite strong opposition from the Philippine Church, some Catholic politicians presented a series of appeals in a final desperate attempt to contest the constitutional legitimacy of the law. The verdict issued by the court means all provisions relating to contraception and sex education are now enforceable. The idea is to spread a culture of family planning and encourage birth control. The Philippine bishops who have been holding a plenary session in recent days, have tried to save the situation by issuing a “pastoral guide“. . .  [Full text]

Canadian Doctors Should Not be Forced to Do Abortions or Provide Birth Control

LifeNews

Reproduced with permission

Mike Schouten

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) is asking for public input as part of its regular review of policy guidelines. At issue in this current review is the right of doctors to refuse to provide certain treatments based on religious or moral grounds.

There will always be some tension between the moral convictions of an individual medical professional who adheres to his or her own worldview and the different procedures that are legally available in a pluralistic society. The current CPSO guidelines recognize this tension. In an effort to balance competing interests, the policy allows doctors to refrain from performing non-emergency procedures should the procedures violate their individual conscience.

It is always beneficial to review policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to the health and wellbeing of Canadians. But the current review and discussion over CPSO guidelines is not about improving care for residents of Ontario. Instead, it seems to be about forcing medical professionals to set aside their own worldview and adopt a conflicting one.

To be clear, we are not talking about providing health-care services where a patient’s life is at risk. No, when a discussion about conscience-protection takes place it is almost always surrounding issues such as like infant male circumcision, prescribed birth control, certain types of medications, medicinal marijuana, or an abortion procedure. In the future, this list may very well include euthanasia or assisted suicide.

On occasion, the tension between the conscience of a doctor and the desire of a patient is experienced in a tangible way. Kate Desjardins is a 25-year-old Ottawa resident who, earlier this year, entered a walk-in clinic to have her prescription for birth control renewed. However, this was not a routine visit. As Ms. Desjardins quickly found out, the doctor on duty did not prescribe contraceptives. Although Ms. Desjardins’ life wasn’t in danger and she could most certainly have secured a prescription renewal at any number of surrounding clinics, her experience has been highlighted by those pushing to have the conscience objection nullified by the CPSO.

It’s not about availability of services, but about imposing morality on all physicians.

Clearly this isn’t about adequate and timely access to health-care, both of which were still available to Ms. Desjardins. Essentially, this is about a patient’s right to access all medical services from any doctor of his or her choosing. It’s not about availability of services, but about imposing morality on all physicians, to the point where doctors need to violate their own conscience in order to serve their patients.

Justin Trudeau was chastised from a wide variety of Canadians when he decided to impose his worldview on the Liberal Party of Canada by forcing Liberal MPs to violate their consciences in the event that an abortion law ever made it to a vote in Parliament. The same principle applies in the present debate surrounding conscience protection for physicians. This is a battle about conflicting worldviews, not adequate access to healthcare. The target of leftist ideologues include all those who hold to a worldview (religious or otherwise) opposed to their own. So, who actually is forcing their religion on whom?

Canadians are not perishing because doctors won’t take part in elective, non-emergency medical procedures

On the one hand, we have doctors arguing for their freedom of conscience, which is guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And on the other, we have patients who believe they have the right to a medical procedure from any physician of their choosing. If the object of the CPSO guidelines is to balance rights and obligations, then taking away conscience objections would throw balance out the window altogether.

Conscience-protection guidelines are vital if we are to have a well functioning and vibrant health care system. As Dr. Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University said recently, “Do you really want to be treated by a doctor who doesn’t care if he thinks that he’s doing something unconscionable or unethical or immoral?”

Canadians are not perishing because doctors won’t take part in elective, non-emergency medical procedures. That someone was offended because they had to walk a few extra blocks to renew their birth control prescription does not justify the CPSO forcing doctors to contravene their Charter-protected freedom of conscience.