Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
BBC News
A doctor who refused to use transgender pronouns as people’s chosen sex as it went against his Christian faith has lost his tribunal.
Disability assessor Dr David Mackereth, from Dudley, West Midlands, claimed the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) breached his right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
But a panel ruled his biblical view of what it is to be male and female was “incompatible with human dignity.” . . . [Full text]
The Abortion Law Reform Act 2019 No. 11 has become law in New South Wales, Australia. It is obviously modelled on Queensland’s Termination of Pregnancy Act 2018.
The law permits abortion up to 22 weeks gestation for any reason; no medical indications are required (Section 5). Abortion after 22 weeks gestation may be performed for any reason that two specialist practitioners find sufficient, including current and future “social circumstances” (6(3)b).
A provision for conscientious objection requires disclosure of objections to abortion by a practitioner when asked by someone (not necessarily a patient) to perform or assist in the performance of an abortion on someone else, to make a decision about whether an abortion should be provided for someone else who is over 22 weeks pregnant (Section 6), or to advise about the performance of an abortion on someone else.
The law requires disclosure of objections to abortion by a practitioner when asked by someone (not necessarily a patient) to perform or assist in the performance of an abortion on someone else [(9(1)a(i) and (ii)], to make a decision about whether an abortion should be provided for someone else who is over 22 weeks pregnant [(9(1)a(iii)], or to advise about the performance of an abortion on someone else [(9(1)a(iv)].
When a woman up to 22 weeks pregnant wants an abortion or advice about an abortion [i.e., under 9(1)a(i) or (ii)], an objecting practitioner is required to disclose his objection [9(2)] explain how she can contact a non-objecting practitioner [9(3)a], or transfer the care of the patient to a practitioner willing to provide an abortion, or to an agency (health service provider) where an abortion can be provided [9(3)b].
However, if the woman is over 22 weeks pregnant, a practitioner is obliged to disclose objections to abortion but, if not convinced that the abortion should be performed, is not obliged to facilitate the abortion by explaining how she can contact a non-objecting practitioner or by a transfer of care to a willing colleague. That is because section 9(3) makes no reference to 9(1)a(iii).
Practitioners who object to abortion in principle and those who object in particular cases are often unwilling to facilitate the procedure by referral, arranging transfers of care or other means because they believe that this makes them parties to or complicit in an immoral act. Thus, the provision for conscientious objection in the bill actually suppresses the exercise of freedom of conscience by these practitioners with respect to abortions up to 22 weeks gestation.
On this point Queensland’s Termination of Pregnancy Act, while it also suppresses the exercise of freedom of conscience by physicians who object to referral for abortion, at least does so consistently from conception to birth.
It is possible that the wording of this provision has been been muddled in New South Wales either in an attempt to put an end to the idea that only women can become pregnant, or to avoid the possibility that abortion might not be available to a woman who believes that she is a man, or who believes that she is neither a woman nor a man, but who becomes pregnant.
In any case, New South Wales is the first jurisdiction to make the exercise of freedom of conscience in relation to abortion conditional upon the gestational age of an embryo or foetus. A physician will be free to fully exercise freedom of conscience at 22 weeks plus one day, but not at 22 weeks minus one day. The inexact calculation of gestational age contributes further to the arbitrariness of this restriction of fundamental human freedom.
BioEdge
A trans man in the United Kingdom has lost his bid to be deemed a father on his child’s birth certificate – even though he conceived it, gestated it, and gave birth to it.
Astonishingly, it appears to be the first time that English common law has defined the word “mother”.
The would-be father, a natal female multimedia journalist at The Guardian named Freddie McConnell, was deeply disappointed by the decision and said that he plans to appeal. He complained:
“It has serious implications for non-traditional family structures. It upholds the view that only the most traditional forms of family are properly recognised or treated equally. It’s just not fair.”
Washington Examiner
The Trump administration official who enforces civil rights protections in healthcare sees his work on religious liberty as his biggest legacy for the Department of Health and Human Services.
“There is a real problem out there of lack of respect for conscience and religious freedom that needs to be addressed and we are taking the concrete steps to finally address it,” said Roger Severino, 44, director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS. “And I think this is an awakening of sorts that has opened up people’s eyes, both in the healthcare industry and beyond, that this is a right that had been under-enforced, that people were being discriminated against and felt they had nowhere to turn, and now they have somewhere to turn. And it would be a shame if that door ever closed on them again.” . . . [Full text]
The Guardian
Italy’s constitutional court has ruled it was not always a crime to help someone in “intolerable suffering” kill themselves, opening the way for a change of law in the Catholic country.
Parliament is now expected to debate the matter, which was highlighted by the Milan trial of an activist who helped a tetraplegic man die in Switzerland.
Anyone who “facilitates the suicidal intention … of a patient kept alive by life-support treatments and suffering from an irreversible pathology” should not be punished under certain conditions, the top court ruled. . . [Full text]