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]
Category: Law
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.
Polish law and conduct of Polish physicians, clergy, activists and authorities leads to adverse judgement
The European Court of Human Rights has issued a judgement adverse to freedom of conscience and ordered Poland to pay two complainants, a mother and daughter, a total of 61,000 Euros in damages and costs. Subject to the possibility that the English translation of the judgement is faulty, the use of the term “anti-choice activist” by the judges brings their impartiality into question. However, the facts of the case outlined in the judgement suggest that the conduct of Polish health care personnel, anti-abortion activists, clergy and state authorities effectively guaranteed an adverse outcome.
A 14 year old girl, P. supported by her mother, S., sought an abortion for a pregnancy alleged to have been the result of a rape. While she obtained the necessary prosecutor’s certificate for the procedure, mother and daughter received contradictory information from two public hospitals in Lublin. Further, health care personnel clearly violated principles of patient confidentiality and informed consent in an effort to dissuade the girl from having an abortion. These violations included clearly coercive and manipulative tactics. P and S experienced
- the intervention of a priest and anti-abortion activists, unsolicited and unwanted,
- importuning by anti-abortion activists that included confrontations in public,
- national media attention, including a press release issued by a hospital concerning P,
- detention and six hours of questioning by the police,
- apprehension of the girl by state authorities, apparently for the express purpose of preventing the abortion,
- posting on internet by the Catholic News Agency of the girl’s travel to Gdansk for an abortion,
- the filing of criminal charges against the girl for having had unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor (i.e., the rape that resulted in pregnancy)
While the court found that objecting physicians had a legal obligation to refer patients for abortion, the source of that legal obligation was Polish law. Article 39 of Poland’s Doctor and Dentist Professions Act imposes a legal obligation of referral. The imposition is objectionable in principle, but the European Court of Human Rights can hardly be criticized for applying Polish law to Polish citizens.