Category: News

International constitutional and human rights lawyer joins Protection of Conscience Project Advisory Board

News release 

For immediate release

Protection of Conscience Project

The Protection of Conscience Project welcomes Dr. Iain Benson, Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney and Extraordinary Professor of Law, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein South Africa to the Project Advisory Board.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the father of seven children, Professor Benson is an academic, lecturer and practising lawyer specialising in pluralism and human rights.  His particular focus is on freedoms of association, conscience and religion, the nature of pluralism, multi-culturalism and relationships between law, religion and culture. He has been involved in many of the leading cases on rights of association, conscience and religion in Canada and abroad for two decades.  As a barrister he has appeared before all levels of court and his work has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada and the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

He was one of the drafters of the South African Charter of Religious Rights and Freedoms (signed by all major religions in that country in September 2010) and remains closely involved in advancing the Charter in that country and similar projects elsewhere.

Author of over 40 academic articles and book chapters, he is co-editor with Barry W. Bussey, of Religion Liberty and the Jurisdictional Limits of Law (Toronto: Lexis Nexis, 2017) and authored Living Together with Disagreement: Pluralism, the Secular and the Fair Treatment of Beliefs by Law (Ballan Australia: Connor Court, 2012). His scholarly work is referred to in many books and articles.

He teaches Legal Philosophy, Legal History, Public International Law, Human Rights and Contemporary Legal Issues. He works in English and French, dividing his time between Australia (where he now lives) and France, South Africa and Canada (in the latter two of which he has appointments).[Faculty profile]

Contact:
Sean Murphy, Administrator
Protection of Conscience Project
protection@consciencelaws.org

The Protection of Conscience Project is a non-profit, non-denominational initiative that advocates for freedom of conscience in health care. The Project does not take a position on the morality or acceptability of morally contested procedures. Since 1999, the Project has been supporting health care workers who want to provide the best care  for their patients without violating their own personal and professional integrity. 

New HHS office that enforces health workers’ religious rights received 300 complaints in a month

The Hill

Jessie Hellman

More than 300 individuals filed a complaint with the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department over the last month, saying that their religious or conscience rights have been violated by their employer, a state or state agency or a health provider.

The complaints follow the creation of a new division within HHS that focuses on enforcing those rights and investigating complaints from individuals who say their rights have been violated.

For example, a nurse could file a complaint against their employer if they are coerced into participating in an abortion or disciplined for refusing to do so . . . [Full Text]

World medical body pushes back on conscience fight

The Catholic Register

Michael Swan

The international society of Catholic doctors is using Canada as an example of what can go wrong when doctors are forced to refer for abortion.

The World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations is drawing on Canada’s experience to counter proposals before the World Medical Association to adopt forced referrals and signal ethical acceptance for euthanasia. . . [Full Text]

Pregnant women in rural B.C. urged to leave town to deliver

40% of women in rural Canada have to drive at least 1 hour away for maternity services

CBC News

Briar Stewart

For pregnant women in Fort Nelson, B.C., part of the prenatal routine includes agreeing not to have their babies in the northern community.

“Due to staffing issues, we are unable to conduct safe obstetric care,” says the memo from the health centre.

An official with Northern Health, which oversees health centres in the region, says while physicians and staff are equipped to respond to  an “unplanned delivery,” women are advised to leave up to a month before their due date because “the safety of both the mother and the baby must come first.”

Fort Nelson, a community of 3,500, is one of dozens of rural communities in Canada where maternity services have been eliminated, in part because of the ongoing struggle to recruit and retain doctors in remote parts of the country.

The lack of intrapartum care means some women have to travel hundreds of kilometres and pay thousands of dollars to have their babies, even though health experts say long-distance delivery can come with greater health risks. . . [Full Text]

Belgium’s euthanasia commission under fire after shock letter by whistleblower

BioEdge

Xavier Symon

Evidence of gross negligence is mounting against Belgium’s peak euthanasia regulatory body, the Federal Commission for Euthanasia Control and Evaluation.

Dr. Ludo Van Opdenbosch, a neurologist who was a Commission member for several years, resigned in September 2017. Associated Press recently obtained the letter of resignation that Dr Van Opdenbosch sent to senior politicians, which details his dissatisfaction with the oversight processes of the Commission. “I do not want to be part of a committee that deliberately violates the law,” he wrote.

According to the letter, the Commission failed to refer to authorities a doctor who Van Opdenbosch says euthanised a demented patient without consent. The letter outlines the basic details of the case – the patient, whose identity was not disclosed, was euthanised at the family’s request, and there was no record of any prior request for euthanasia from the patient.

Furthermore, Van Opdenbosch states that when he expressed concerns about other potentially problematic cases, he was immediately “silenced” by other members of the Commission. He suggests that because many of the doctors on the commission are leading euthanasia practitioners, they can protect each other from scrutiny, and act with “impunity”.

“It’s not euthanasia because the patient didn’t ask, so it’s the voluntary taking of a life,” said Dr An Haekens, psychiatric director at the Alexianen Psychiatric Hospital in Tienen, Belgium. “I don’t know another word other than murder to describe this.”

However, the two co-chairs of the commission, Dr Wim Distelmans and Gilles Genicot, have strongly denied that there has been any negligence. “It can obviously occur that some debate emerges among members but our role is to make sure that the law is observed and certainly not to trespass it,” they said. They also denied that Van Opdenbosch had been muzzled.

Associated Press had already revealed details of a rift between the co-chair of the Commission, Dr. Willem Distelmans, and Lieve Thienpont, an advocate of euthanasia for the mentally ill. Distelmans suggested some of Thienpont’s patients might have been killed without meeting all the legal requirements.

More than 360 doctors, academics and others have since signed a petition calling for tighter controls on euthanasia for psychiatric patients.

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