Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
7 The Denver Channel
DENVER (AP) — After watching his mother die slowly when he stopped her medication, Neil Mahoney knew he wanted the option of ending his own life peacefully when a doctor told him in July that he had months to live after being diagnosed with cancer.
A physician was willing to help him do that under Colorado’s medically assisted suicide law, but she was fired by Centura Health, a Christian-affiliated health system, for violating its guidelines on the issue. . . [Full text]
Kaiser Health News
DENVER — A Christian-run health system in Colorado has fired a veteran doctor who went to court to fight for the right of her patient to use the state’s medical aid-in-dying law, citing religious doctrine that describes “assisted suicide” as “intrinsically evil.”
Centura Health Corp. this week abruptly terminated Dr. Barbara Morris, 65, a geriatrician with 40 years of experience, who had planned to help her patient, Cornelius “Neil” Mahoney, 64, end his life at his home. Mahoney, who has terminal cancer, is eligible to use the state’s law, overwhelmingly approved by Colorado voters in 2016.
The growing number of state aid-in-dying provisions are increasingly coming into conflict with the precepts of faith-based hospitals, which oppose the practice on religious grounds. . . [Full text]
The Irish Times
30 August, 2019
The Medical Council has issued revised ethical guidance for doctors following the introduction of abortion legislation earlier this year.
A new version of its ethics document provides updated guidance for doctors who have conscientious objections to particular forms of treatment, procedures or care, not just in relation to abortion.
The amended guide to professional conduct and ethics for doctors says termination of pregnancy is legally permissible within the provisions of legislation introduced in 2018. . . [Full text]
The Australian
30 August, 2019
Religious doctors in Victoria and Queensland may still be compelled to refer a patient for an abortion under the Morrison government’s proposed religious discrimination bill if they conscientiously object to the procedure, triggering concerns among some legal experts.
The exposure draft bill, released yesterday by Attorney-General Christian Porter, is designed to ensure health practitioners do not have to participate in an abortion or euthanasia, or prescribe contraception to a patient, if they are opposed on religious grounds. . . [Full text]
National Public Radio
By the time a fetus is 6 months old, it is producing electrical signals recognizable as brain waves.
And clusters of lab-grown human brain cells known as organoids seem to follow a similar schedule, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
“After these organoids are in that six-to-nine-months range, that’s when [the electrical patterns] start to look a lot like what you’d see with a preterm infant,” says Alysson Muotri, director of the stem cell program at the University of California, San Diego. . . [Full text]