Category: News

Doctors make charter challenge on right to refuse care on religious grounds

Christian medical groups claim charter rights violated

CBC News

Christian medical professionals are challenging Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons in court over a policy that requires doctors to provide or at least refer medical services, even when they clash with personal values.
In a statement of claim filed in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, two groups  –  the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada and the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians’ Societies  –  and five individual doctors say the college’s policy violates their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. . . [Full text]

Christian doctors’ group says new college policy infringes on freedom of conscience

Christian Medical and Dental Society seeks protection from a College of Physicians rule requiring doctors to refer patients seeking abortions and, once it’s legal, euthanasia.

Toronto Star

Lauren Pelly

With physician-assisted suicide on the horizon, the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada is asking the Ontario Superior Court to declare that a new regulatory policy infringes upon doctors’ freedom of conscience.

The society, which represents close to 1,700 members, filed documents in court on Friday regarding the CPSO’s Professional Obligations and Human Rights policy that was announced on March 6. The policy means doctors who refuse to refer patients for services on religious and moral grounds, including abortions, could face discipline from their regulating body. . . [Full Text]

 

The doctors’ dilemma

National Post (Editorial)

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario recently voted to require doctors who refuse to provide certain services for reasons of conscience to provide referrals to doctors who will.

The new policy, enacted over the objections of the Ontario Medical Association, is a marked departure from the old. It paints medicine as a battlefield, with equal and opposite freedoms repeatedly colliding. Thus the college graciously agrees to limit physicians’ freedom of conscience in order to safeguard patients’ right of access.

The problem is that “right of access” is a college creation, while freedom of conscience is enshrined in the Charter of Rights. Doctors make informed decisions about treatment constantly. If they did not refuse to prescribe some treatments and suggest others, they would not be professionals. A patient storming into an office demanding amputation to treat a broken arm does not have “right of access.” . . . [Full text]

Bill OK’d by committee would give more information to patients

The State Journal Register

Doug Finke, State Capitol Bureau

A bill designed to ensure patients are given treatment information when their health-care providers invoke the state’s Right of Conscience Act was approved by the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday.

Under Senate Bill 1564, health-care providers would be required to establish written protocols that provide patients with information about the treatment options available and how they can get access to those options. [Full text]

 

Trampled rights

Catholic Register (Editorial)

Requiring doctors to remain pillars of integrity while chipping at their moral underpinning is an odious contradiction. Yet that is what the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario proposes with a draconian new policy that tramples on conscience and religious rights.

The provincial regulatory body disregarded the majority view of 16,000 public submissions, dismissed the opinion of the Ontario Medical Association and the American Medical Association, and rejected the policy of the Canadian Medical Association when it voted 21-3 to force doctors to refer patients who seek treatments that their own doctor won’t provide due to moral or religious convictions. . . [Full text]