Category: News

Polish baby left screaming for an hour before dying after botched abortion: reports

LifeSite News

Natalia Dueholm

March 21, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Physicians at Holy Family Hospital in Warsaw, Poland, left a child to die after a botched abortion earlier this month, according to local media.

As Republika Television reports, the baby was born March 7, 2016 at the 24th week of gestational age and cried and screamed for an hour before dying. According to witnesses, the baby’s cry is impossible to forget. Nonetheless, medical personnel did not try to help the child in any way.

Hospital spokesperson Dorota Jasłowska-Niemyska explained that a patient at the end of the 23rd week of pregnancy came to the hospital, and her medical tests suggested that the baby had Down syndrome. The hospital claims that everything that happened thereafter was according to the law and medical procedures. The dignity of the patient and the dignity of the fetus were respected, she continued.

When asked by a reporter of Salve TV about the dignity of a child that had been born alive, Jasłowska-Niemyska said: “Those are details which I can’t talk about. It is confidential, and I am not allowed to comment on the details of this procedure.” . . . [Full Text]

 

Hospitals should be able to opt out of doctor-assisted death, expert says

Ottawa Citizen

Elizabeth Payne

Neither doctors nor the institutions where they work should be forced to offer physician-assisted suicide, an expert on end-of-life decision making said Monday.

Judith Wahl, of Toronto’s Advocacy Centre for the Elderly, said Ontario should be able to create a system in which physician assisted death is accessible for those who qualify and want it, without forcing institutions and physicians to act against their beliefs.

“The provincial government can authorize those exemptions. I think people should be able to opt out and facilities should be able to opt out. I think we have to look at the system as a whole.”

With months to go until there is a law on physician assisted dying, the issue is already controversial. Catholic hospitals and health institutions across Ontario  –  including Bruyere Continuing Care in Ottawa  –  say they will not offer physician assisted death once it becomes law later this year. Bruyere is Ottawa’s only hospital with an acute palliative care ward. . . [Full text]

 

Some Quebec doctors let suicide victims die though treatment was available: college

National Post

Graeme Hamilton

MONTREAL  –  Quebec’s College of Physicians has issued an ethics bulletin to its members after learning that some doctors were allowing suicide victims to die when life-saving treatment was available.

The bulletin says the college learned last fall that, “in some Quebec hospitals, some people who had attempted to end their lives through poisoning were not resuscitated when, in the opinion of certain experts, a treatment spread out over a few days could have saved them with no, or almost no, aftereffects.”

It goes on to spell out a physician’s ethical and legal duty to provide care, even to patients seeking to end their own lives.

Yves Robert, the college’s secretary, told the National Post that an unspecified number of doctors were interpreting suicide attempts as an implicit refusal of treatment. They “refused to provide the antidote that could have saved a life. This was the real ethical issue,” he said. . . [Full text]

 

New Belgian law aims to force doctors into euthanasia

 LifeSite News

Jeanne Smits

BRUSSELS, March 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A handful of Belgian lawmakers are trying to obtain a radical change to the rules governing euthanasia in the country, where so-called “mercy-killing” has been legal since 2002.

Not content with one of the most liberal euthanasia laws in the world, the socialist representatives now want to oblige doctors who have conscientious objections to killing their patients asking for euthanasia, to refer them to a doctor who is prepared to do so. This has been interpreted as a sort of new obligation to accede to all euthanasia requests within a very short period of time, and the wording of the proposed legislation supports this. The changes also include enhanced rights attached to a patient’s “living will” as well as the negation of the right to conscientious objection for institutions. . . [Full text]

 

MPs launch new Conscience Objection Bill

 Ekklesia

March 2nd 2016 marked 100 years since the first inclusive right of conscientious objection became law in the United Kingdom.

To commemorate the centenary, the NGO Conscience: Taxes for Peace not War, hosted a discussion evening featuring MPs from three different parties and Sir Richard Jolly, a former United Nations Assistant Secretary General.

It also served as the launch of the ‘Taxes for Peace Bill’ legislation which would bring conscientious objection into the 21st century by allowing people who object to funding war to re-direct the military portion of their taxes to non-violent methods of sustaining our national security. . . [Full text]