Category: Law

Six things to know about the abortion bill

Main provisions of the General Scheme of a Bill to Regulate Termination of Pregnancy

The Irish Times

Minister for Health Simon Harris outlined in the Seanad some of the main provisions of the General Scheme of a Bill to Regulate the Termination of Pregnancy, if the referendum on whether to repeal the Eighth Amendment goes ahead and is passed:

1. Risk to life and health of the woman

. . . it would be the Government’s intention to permit termination of pregnancy in cases where there is a risk to the life or of serious harm to the health of the pregnant woman, without a distinction between risk from physical or mental health. . . .

2. Risk to health in an emergency

. . . would cover situations in which the risk to the life or of serious harm to the health of the pregnant woman is immediate.

3. Conditions likely to lead to the death of the foetus

. . . the Government would propose to permit termination of pregnancy on the grounds of a condition which is likely to lead to death before or shortly after birth.. .

4. Early pregnancy (12 weeks)

. . . it would be the Government’s intention to permit termination up to 12 weeks of pregnancy . . .

5.  Offences

. . . a woman who procures or seeks to procure a termination of pregnancy for herself . . . would not be guilty of an offence.

6. Other issues

. . . the Government would also propose to provide in legislation for a number of other issues . . . These would include, for example . . . permitting conscientious objection. . . . [Full Text]

Mexican Senate approves medical conscientious objection bill

Catholic News Agency

Mexico City, Mexico, Mar 26, 2018 / 06:14 pm (ACI Prensa).- The Mexican Senate has approved a measure protecting the conscientious objections of medical personnel who hold moral or ethical objections to certain treatments.

The decree, approved March 22, states that “professionals, technicians, aides, social service providers that are part of the National Healthcare System shall be able to invoke the right of conscientious objection and excuse themselves from participating and/or cooperating in all those programs, activities, practices, treatments, methods or research that contravenes their freedom of conscience based on their values or ethical principles.” . . . [Full text]

 

Mexico enacts provision protecting freedom of conscience for physicians, nurses

Sean Murphy*

Mexico has added a provision to its General Law on Health recognizing freedom of conscience of all physicians and nurses in relation to all services, except in emergencies and life-threatening situations.  In doing so, those responsible took note of existing provisions in The Bioethics Code for Health Personnel and The Code of Conduct for Health Personnel.  The latter includes a particularly striking passage:

32.  It should be emphasized that doctors are  professionals of science and conscience, and cannot be reduced to mere instruments of the patient’s will, since, like the patient, they  are free and responsible persons with a unique collection of values that regulate their lives.

There is no requirement for referral, which many objecting health care workers would find unacceptable because of concern that referral would make them complicit in what they believe to be wrongful conduct.  The new provision is specific to freedom of conscience and does not address issues of access and availability of non-objecting personnel, which will presumably be managed administrative measures or other legal means.

B.C. doctor cleared of wrongdoing for providing assisted death to woman who starved herself

Globe and Mail

Kelly Grant

British Columbia’s physician regulator has cleared a doctor of any wrongdoing for providing medical aid in dying to a woman who did not qualify for the procedure until she starved herself to the brink of death.

A committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia (CPSBC) found that Ellen Wiebe did not break the regulator’s rules when she helped a 56-year-old patient known as Ms. S to die last year.

The case is the first to be made public in which a medical regulator has ruled on the contentious question of whether doctors should grant assisted deaths to patients who only satisfy all the criteria of the federal law after they stop eating and drinking.

“It was determined that Ms. S met the requisite criteria and was indeed eligible for medical assistance in dying, despite the fact that her refusal of medical treatment, food, and water, undoubtedly hastened her death and contributed to its ‘reasonable foreseeability,'” the college’s inquiry committee wrote in a Feb. 13 report. . . . [Full text]

 

Has stopping eating and drinking become a path to assisted dying?

Policy Options

Jocelyn Downie

Can patients, by stopping eating and drinking, make themselves meet the criteria for a “grievous and irremediable medical condition,” the requirement to access MAiD?

Ms. S. was a 56-year-old woman with advanced multiple sclerosis. In June 2016, when her suffering became intolerable and her state of decline was advanced as a result of her incurable medical condition, she asked Dr. Ellen Wiebe for medical assistance in dying (MAiD). Ms. S. had earlier declined potentially effective treatment. Dr. Wiebe concluded that Ms. S. met most of the eligibility criteria for MAiD in Canada: incurable condition, advanced state of decline in capability, and enduring and intolerable suffering not remediable by any means acceptable to her. However, as she did not believe that Ms. S. would die “in the foreseeable future,” she deemed her not to meet the final eligibility criterion for MAiD: “natural death has become reasonably foreseeable.” Ms. S. asked again for MAiD in December 2016 and January 2017 and each time she was deemed ineligible on the same grounds. . . [Full Text]