The Religious Liberty Protection Act has been passed by the Michigan Senate by a vote of 26-12. It must now be considered by the state House of Representatives. [Associated Press]
Category: Law
Woman seeks legalization of assisted suicide in Ireland
58 year old Marie Fleming, wife of euthanasia campaigner Tom Curran, has brought a case in the Irish High Court to legalize assisted suicide in Ireland. She is said to be “terminally ill with multiple sclerosis.” [Reuters]
Re: Washington State Board of Pharmacy Regulation
- Carrie Severino* | My organization, the Judicial Education Project, in conjunction with two leading Jewish Orthodox Groups, Agudath Israel of America and the National Council of Young Israel, has filed an amicus curiae brief in a Becket Fund case, Stormans Inc. v. Mary Selecky, et al. . . . Stormans challenges the constitutionality of Washington State’s Board of Pharmacy regulations that require pharmacists and pharmacies to dispense emergency contraceptives. Unfortunately, this regulatory burden falls—due to secular regulatory exemptions and the Board’s selective regulatory enforcement—exclusively on religious objections to emergency contraception, while passing over similarly situated non-religious objectors. . .
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Australian bill permits causing patient death, lacks adequate conscience protection
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]
World Health Organization demands referral for abortion
Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems, a newly revised publication of the World Health Organization, claims that objecting health care workers have an ethical responsibility to refer patients for abortion, or to provide abortions if referral is not possible. (Sec. 3.3.6, p. 69, Box 3.2,p. 73). It also claims that conscientious objection without referral is a barrier to health care and that referral is a legal obligation under human rights law. Chapter 4 of the text, which is the basis for these demands, was revised under the guidance of the Programme on International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada (p. 11). Two professors from this faculty, Rebecca Cook and Bernard Dickens, have been making such claims for years. They have, in the past, seriously misrepresented the law on this point in an effort to make referral for abortion mandatory. (See Postscript for the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada: Morgentaler vs. Professors Cook and Dickens, and Conscientious Objection as a Crime Against Humanity.) The WHO document has been reviewed and criticized by Susan Yoshihara of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, but awaits a critique by medical and legal professionals.