Category: Assisted suicide

Manitoba bill aims to protect staff unwilling to offer assisted death

Doctors or nurses who refuse to help patient die protected from repercussions under new legislation

CBC News

Medical professionals in Manitoba who refuse to help terminally ill patients die will be protected from reprisals under new legislation introduced Tuesday.

Manitoba’s Progressive Conservatives said Bill 34, the The Medical Assistance in Dying (Protection for Health Professionals and Others) Act, will ensure staff cannot be compelled to go against their own religious or ethical beliefs.

“The legislation will protect the rights of those who do not wish to participate in medically assisted death for conscience, faith or other reasons,” Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said. . . [Full text]

 

Participating in medically assisted death not mandatory for health-care workers

New provincial bill similar to federal law

Winnipeg Free Press

Larry Kusch

The provincial government introduced legislation Tuesday that would prevent sanctions against a health professional who refuses to participate in a medically assisted death.

In introducing Bill 34, The Medical Assistance in Dying (Protection for Health Professionals and Others) Act, Health Minister Kelvin Goertzen said it would ensure medical professionals are not disciplined for their beliefs.

“The legislation will protect the rights of those who do not wish to participate in a medically assisted death for conscious, faith or other reasons,” he told the legislative assembly. [Full text]

 

The Nature and Necessity of Conscience Protections for Health Care Providers

From Protecting the Least of Among Us:  The Enduring Universal Wisdom of the Church on Euthanasia

Keynote Address to Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute
Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute

Gerhard Cardinal Müller*

Given the gravity of the threat posed by legal euthanasia, it is essential that we work for its reversal in the law.  But in the meantime, we must take immediate measures to protect the rights of health care providers who refuse to collaborate in or facilitate access to euthanasia.

This is not simply a Catholic issue.  No one who trains and takes an oath to care for the sick should be pressed into ending the lives of the very people that they have promised to serve. . . [Full text]

New South Wales assisted suicide/euthanasia bill permits refusal, protects practitioners

Euthanasia debate: NSW Parliament to consider drafted legislation on assisted dying

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Ashleigh Raper & Andrew Griffits

New South Wales is a step closer to allowing terminally ill people to voluntarily end their lives, with a draft bill with cross-party support being released today.

The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill has been drafted by a parliamentary working group made up of members from the Coalition, Labor, Greens and an independent.

The draft bill would give a person over the age of 25 the right to request assistance from a medical practitioner to end their life. . . .[ Full text]

  • The bill does not include a protection of conscience provision per se.  However, Sections 6, 24 and 25 permit a practitioner to refuse to participate for any reason, making no distinction between refusal for reasons of conscience and refusal for other reasons.  It also equally protects both participating and non-participating practitioners from criminal and civil liability.

New England Journal of Medicine publishes “attack on medical conscience”

Pro-Lifers: Get Out of Medicine!

First Things

Wesley J. Smith

Doctors in the United States cannot be forced to perform abortions or assist suicides. But that may soon change. Bioethicists and other medical elites have launched a frontal assault against doctors seeking to practice their professions under the values established by the Hippocratic Oath. The campaign’s goal? To force doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and others in the health field who hold pro-life or orthodox religious views to choose between their careers and their convictions.

Ethics opinions, legislation, and court filings seeking to deny “medical conscience” have proliferated as journals, legislative bodies, and the courts have taken up the cause. In the last year, these efforts have moved from the relative hinterlands of professional discussions into the center of establishment medical discourse. Most recently, preeminent bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel—one of Obamacare’s principal architects—coauthored with Ronit Y. Stahl an attack on medical conscience in the New England Journal of Medicine, perhaps the world’s most prestigious medical journal. When advocacy of this kind is published by the NEJM, it is time to sound the air raid sirens. . . [Full text]