Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
AP News
LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Portugal’s president on Thursday asked the country’s Constitutional Court to evaluate a recent law passed by parliament that allows euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill and gravely injured people.
Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said in a statement the legislation appears “excessively imprecise,” potentially creating a situation of “legal uncertainty.” . . . [Full Text]
The Irish Times
Planned legislation before the Oireachtas which seeks to legalise assisted dying in Ireland is “deeply flawed” and leaves the population open to “significant risk”, consultants in palliative medicine have warned.
Last October, the Dáil voted to pass the Dying with Dignity Bill to committee stage by 81 to 71 votes after the three Government parties allowed a free vote on the legislation.
However, experts working in end-of-life care have expressed concern about the wording of the Bill, tabled by People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny . . .[Full text]
Albuquerque Journal
SANTA FE – Discussions about abortion laws in New Mexico have always had moral and religious overtones.
But this year’s debate at the Roundhouse over bills to repeal a long-dormant 1969 state abortion ban has also hinged on a “conscience clause” in the abortion statute that allows health care practitioners to decide not to participate in such procedures.
Critics of the legislation, which passed the Senate last week and could move quickly through the House, say repealing the abortion ban would lead to an exodus of health care workers, especially in rural New Mexico.
But backers claim the argument is a red herring and point to other conscience protections in state and federal law that would remain in place if the abortion law is repealed. . . continue reading
The New Mexico Political Report
Two years after a group of conservative Democrats, along with Republicans voted against decriminalizing abortion care, the state Senate passed SB 10 Thursday, 25 to 17.
SB 10, sponsored by state Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, is called the Respect New Mexico Women and Families Act and has a mirror bill, HB 7, sponsored by Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena, D-Mesilla. The two bills remove three sections from the criminal code which, in 1969, banned abortion with some limited exceptions.
The law has repeatedly been called archaic and advocates for its repeal said it included language contrary to how medicine is currently practiced. . . . [Full text]
As Parliament discusses Bill C-7’s expansion of the Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Act, one issue has been conspicuously absent from public debate, even though it has major implications for medicine and for patients: the impact of the bill on the role of the medical profession in determining the standard of care, as it applies to MAiD.
The government introduced Bill C-7 in response to the decision of Quebec Superior Court Justice Christine Beaudouin (in the Truchon case), who ruled unconstitutional the current law’s limiting of MAiD to those whose natural death is “reasonably foreseeable.”. . . [Full Text]