Category: Legal Commentary

Australia needs to recognise conscience rights, not just religious rights

Steady on! What about atheists and agnostics?

Mercatornet

David Van Gend*

Two problems with Scott Morrison’s proposed Religious Discrimination Bill. First, what does it mean for those who make a stand on conscientious, not religious, grounds? Why should our laws protect religious dissenters but not agnostic dissenters?

Second, does it effectively address the actual threats facing religious people? These are not threats to the freedom to worship but the freedom to speak one’s truth in the public square (not so, Izzy?) or educate one’s children in a faith-based school (not a ‘Safe School’) whose teachers uphold religious values.

Let me give two personal anecdotes of the overarching threat, whether to religious or irreligious people, which is the threat to free speech. Without free speech we cannot defend our deepest conscientious or religious convictions. . . {Full text]

Forced Referral and Freedom of Religion vs Freedom of Conscience

Without freedom of conscience our free democracy would not exist

The Epoch Times

Shawn Whatley, MD*

A recent court decision in Ontario missed the mark when it ignored the impact forced referral has on freedom of conscience.

On May 15, the Ontario appeals court ruled that doctors must give patients a referral for euthanasia, abortion, and other contentious issues, regardless of what an individual doctor thinks about them.

The court battle started after the medical regulator in Ontario, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), created a policy that forced doctors to refer for procedures, regardless of doctors’ deeply held convictions of religion or conscience. Doctors who refuse would risk being fined and/or losing their license to practice medicine. . . [Full text]

HHS Final Conscience Rule and Protected Employees

Hall Render Killian Heath & Lyman PC

Robin M. Sheridan and Lindsey Croasdale

On May 2, 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) Office of Civil Rights (“OCR”) announced the issuance of the final conscience rule, which prohibits discrimination of individuals on the basis of their exercise of conscience in HHS-funded programs. The rule has not yet been published in the Federal Register, but HHS has released an unofficial version of the document. This rule will be effective 60 days after is it published in the Federal Register. . . [Full text]

With Ontario court’s ruling on doctors, the revolution continues

There is a growing antipathy among Canadian elites against conscientious individuals who refuse to accept their views

National Post

Barry W. Bussey*

How is it that such a simple decision could be made so complicated? Given the history of accommodating individual conscience in the medical profession and in Canadian law, the case before the Ontario Court of Appeal to accommodate doctors’ consciences was a “no-brainer.” The law, history, and basic human decency cried out: “Accommodate the physician!” Instead, the highest court in Ontario followed the worrying legal revolution against accommodation and stomped on conscience. And it did so wrapped up in language that purported to support vulnerable patients.

The decision against physicians who, because of conscience, cannot assist in the intentional killing of a human being, pre- or post-birth, is a travesty of justice. It is wrong. It is wrong morally, ethically and legally. . . [Full Text]

Physician Participation in Lethal Injection

Deborah W. Denno

On April 1, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Missouri death-row inmate’s claim that executing him using the state’s lethal-injection protocol would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” because blood-filled tumors in his head, neck, and throat could rupture and cause him to choke and suffer “excruciating” and “prolonged pain.”. . . the opinion’s unusual facts and circumstances throw into sharp relief the pervasiveness of physician participation in lethal injection despite the medical community’s professed condemnation of such involvement. . .

Denno DW. Physician Participation in Lethal Injection. N Engl J Med 2019; 380:1790-1791 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1814786