Category: Legal Commentary

When doctors say No

A law professor defends physicians’ right to conscientious objection

MercatorNet

Michael Quinlan*

As abortion, euthanasia and other controversial procedures become more widespread, conscientious objection for healthcare workers is becoming a flashpoint for controversy throughout the Western world. Some doctors and ethicists have argued that conscientious objection itself is unethical because doctors are required to fulfil any legal request that their patients make.

MercatorNet interviewed Professor Michael Quinlan, dean of the law school at the Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia, about this contentious issue. He has just published an article on the situation in Australian jurisdictions. [Full text]

Physicians, conscience, and assisted dying

By requiring that physicians make referrals for assisted dying, Ontario is forcing them to leave medicine or abandon their ethical framework.

Policy Options

Deina Warren,* Derek Ross*

Of all the jurisdictions worldwide that permit some form of assisted suicide, Ontario stands alone in mandating that physicians participate in it. . . [C]ompelling physicians to participate in MAID results in the state deciding what everyone should believe; and second, it undermines physicians’ moral integrity, a foundational component of medical ethics and principled health care. . . [Full text]

Politicians wrestle with doctors’ consciences in Victoria

Conscientious objection needs to be protected

MercatorNet
Reproduced with permission

Paul Russell*

As the Victorian Ministerial Advisory Panel on “assisted dying” makes ready to release its interim report sometime in April, The Age newspaper turned its attention to the matter of conscience whether a doctor may refuse to take part in any action that would bring about the premature and deliberate death of a person.

Conscience – or the ability to draw upon one’s own personal belief system in making a decision about an action – plays out at different levels in any debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide. . . [Full text]

 

Constitutional lawyers debate conscience rights

BC Catholic

Deborah Gyapong

Legal experts squared off in a debate on physicians’ conscience rights March 16 in a debate hosted by the University of Ottawa’s law school.

Albertos Polizogopoulos, representing five Ontario doctors challenging Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeon policies requiring effective referral on procedures such as abortion and euthanasia, argued for conscience rights. He argued Section 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides such protection. . .

 

Queen’s University Senior Contracts Negotiator Ricardo Smalling argued physicians’ conscience rights must be balanced with the rights of patients who are seeking care in their “weakest” moments.

Highlighting the “subjective nature of conscience,” Smalling said eliminating conscientious objection “is the only way to ensure there is a predictable framework that guarantees a patient’s health care.” . . . [Full text]

 

Growing Intolerance Threatens Rights of Conscience of Health Care Workers

cnsnews.com

Lynn Wardle*

Around the world, policies and actions of many governments and governmental agencies are threatening rights of conscience of health care providers and employees.  These challenges and dangers seem to be increasing.

Recent times have seen numerous high-profile incidents in which nurses, doctors, hospital staff, government employees, and other health care workers are being pressured, required and forced to provide morally-controversial elective procedures (such as non-therapeutic abortions) despite their expressed moral objections to participating in such services. [Full text]