Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
DutchNews.nl
A special clinic in The Hague, set up to help people whose doctors do not support euthanasia, has been reprimanded for helping a 47-year-old woman with chronic tinnitus to die, broadcaster Nos says on Monday.
The independent commission charged with monitoring how Dutch euthanasia rules are applied recognises that extreme tinnitus could be a reason for mercy killing but said Gaby Olthuis should have undergone further psychiatric research. . . [Full Text]
National Post
As Helen Church woke up one morning just before Christmas 2012, the pain that had been building for weeks behind her right eye reached an excruciating climax.
Screaming in agony, she ran around her east-end Toronto apartment before finally managing to call 911 and passing out.
For the second time in short succession, she had fallen victim to health care gone badly awry.
Just two years earlier, Ms. Church went to a nearby hospital to have an ovary removed as treatment for a painful cyst. She left hours later with the ovary still in place – and a piece of mesh embedded in her abdomen to repair a non-existent hernia.
Then, months later, a specialist replaced an artificial, cataract-correcting lens that he said had started to wear. The result: That eye was now blind and growing increasingly painful.
The ophthalmologist, another specialist told her later, had implanted the lens in the wrong position, obscuring her sight and puncturing a duct, causing a slow bleed and massive pressure.
“There was so much blood in there, it blew the eyeball out of my head. It was hanging on my cheek,” said Ms. Church, a razor-sharp 83-year-old. “The blood was just dripping everywhere … I was hysterical, the pain was so bad.” . . . [Full Text]
Religion News Service
NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) International rights groups, churches and activists are escalating campaigns against female genital mutilation now that a new practice has emerged in which girls are checking into hospitals to have the procedure.
In what being referred to as the medicalization of FGM, doctors, nurses and other health practitioners are secretly performing the procedures at the request of families.
“Like abortion, they are performing FGM for the money in hospitals and other places,” said the Rev. Richard Nyangoto, a Roman Catholic priest in Kisii County, an area in the country’s southwest where FGM is widely practiced.
“Taking it to hospital does not make it right,” added Nyangoto. “It’s evil.”
Health care providers now perform up to 18 percent of FGM cases and the trend is growing, according to the World Health Organization. . . [Full Text]
Maurice Vellacott, MP
Saskatoon-Wanuskewin
For Immediate Release
OTTAWA – In anticipation of the possible striking down of Canada’s laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide (pending the Supreme Court’s decision in the Carter case), and given the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s (CPSO’s) draft policy “Professional Obligations and Human Rights” [i] which, if passed, would require Ontario physicians to make referrals for controversial medical procedures regardless of their conscientious/religious convictions, Member of Parliament Maurice Vellacott today issued the following statement:
I am deeply concerned about the assault on the fundamental freedoms of Ontario’s doctors should CPSO’s policy forcing doctors to make referrals for morally objectionable “treatments” pass. If the Supreme Court of Canada strikes down Canada’s current laws on euthanasia or assisted suicide, then CPSO’s policy would mean Ontario’s physicians would have a “duty to refer” patients for treatments intended to kill the patient.
From the research I have conducted, with the help of the Library of Parliament, I have learned there is not a single jurisdiction in the world that forces doctors to violate their consciences through mandatory referrals for these life-ending “treatments.” (See attached list of laws in jurisdictions which have legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide.)
We all recognize it is criminally wrong to aid or abet the commission of a criminal act.[ii] In the same way, it would be morally wrong for a doctor to aid or abet (i.e. through referral) the commission of what that doctor deems to be an immoral act – in this case, intentionally killing, or assisting in the killing of, their patient. Following one’s conscience in the provision of euthanasia or assisted suicide, then, entails making a conscientious decision not only about performing euthanasia or assisted suicide, but also about making referrals for them.
The Canadian Medical Association has long been a defender of a physician’s freedom to abstain from being involved in morally objectionable procedures. Last August, the CMA clearly expressed its support for physicians’ freedom of conscience in the provision of euthanasia and assisted suicide should those acts ever be legalized.[iii]
In spite of no jurisdiction in the world imposing on physicians a legal duty to refer for euthanasia or assisted suicide, and in spite of the support for freedom of conscience by the national medical organization representing Canada’s physicians, we have the regulatory body in Ontario poised to punish physicians who act upon their moral guidance system that tells them that killing their patients is wrong.
Over the years, there have been repeated attempts by activists and special interest groups to impose their version of morality on all health care workers (almost succeeding in 2008 to convince CPSO to impose mandatory referral, until a loud public outcry from right across the country compelled CPSO to reverse course.) Such was the threatening climate that compelled me to introduce several private members bills, in successive Parliaments, that would protect health care workers who had conscientious objections to being involved in practices that deliberately take human life.
If the Supreme Court strikes down our laws against assisted suicide/euthanasia, then it will be up to Parliament to come up with a new law. It is clear from CPSO’s actions that we can’t leave it to the regulatory bodies to protect freedom of conscience. Any new law to regulate these life-ending medical procedures will need to include explicit protection for those health care workers who won’t take part in any action that aids or abets the killing of their patients.
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For further information and comment, call (613) 992-1966 or (613) 297-2249; email: maurice.vellacott.a1@parl.gc.ca
Notes
[i] http://policyconsult.cpso.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Draft-Professional-Obligations-and-Human-Rights.pdf
[ii]http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/FullText.html
[iii] “Medical Association vows to protect conscience rights,” by Michael Swain, The Catholic Register, August 27, 2014, http://www.catholicregister.org/item/18703-medical-association-vows-to-protect-conscience-rights; and Resolution adopted by General Council at 2014 AGM: “The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) supports the right of all physicians, within the bounds of existing legislation, to follow their conscience when deciding whether to provide medical aid in dying as defined in CMA’s policy on euthanasia and assisted suicide.” (https://www.cma.ca/Assets/assets-library/document/en/GC/Final-Resolutions-GC-2014-Confirmed-Nov-2014.pdf )
A serial rapist and murderer who had won the right to die under Belgium’s controversial euthanasia laws will not now be put to death following fresh medical advice, authorities said Tuesday.
Frank Van Den Bleeken, who has spent 26 years in jail for repeated rapes and a rape-murder, will instead be moved from his prison in the northwestern city of Bruges to a new psychiatric treatment centre in Ghent, Justice Minister Koen Geens said.
The Flemish-language newspaper De Morgen reported Saturday that Van Den Bleeken would be voluntarily euthanized by lethal injection in Bruges prison on January 11. [Full text]