Canadian Medical Association Annual General Meeting, 2014
Strategic Session No. 2: 19 August, 2014
End-of-life care issues in Canada (Committee of the Whole)
Click image to view webcast.
Month: August 2014
How to ditch the Pill, naturally
Why a growing number of women are ditching the pill for all natural methods
Canada.com
First they turned to organic hormone-free meat, eggs and milk, then eco-friendly shampoos and even make-up, now a growing number of women are seeking a natural form of birth control.
And, of course, there’s an app for that.
A growing number of young, educated professional women are turning to fertility awareness, a form of natural family planning that sounds like your grandmother’s rhythm method but is way more accurate. Essentially, instead of taking hormone-based or physical contraception, women track their internal body temperature each morning, monitor their cervical mucus for changes that occur with their monthly cycle and then abstain from sex or use a back-up form of birth control when they’re fertile. It’s best known as fertility awareness but goes by a number of other names. [Full text]
When Freedoms Collide
Maxim Institute Auckland, New Zealand
2014 Sir John Graham Lecture – When Freedoms Collide from Maxim Institute on Vimeo.
Controversy over doctors’ right to say “no”
The most controversial issues relate to abortion referrals or prescribing birth control.
CMAJ September 16, 2014 186:E483-E484; published ahead of print August 18, 2014
Religious groups, doctor’s organizations, ethicists and abortion rights advocates are raising concerns around the review of an Ontario policy that outlines, among other things, physicians’ right to object to patients’ requests for services on moral grounds.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s Physicians and Ontario Human Rights Code is up for its five-year review, with both public and expert opinion being sought.
On one side of the spectrum, faith groups and especially Catholic organizations are asking that the current policy – which allows physicians to opt out of non-emergency services they conscientiously object to – shouldn’t be amended.
While the policy covers any potential objection, the ones most discussed in the media have been related to abortion referrals or prescribing of birth control. [Full text]
The doctor who refused to abort
Q&A | Bogdan Chazan lost his post heading a Polish government–run maternity hospital after he said his conscience prevented him from killing an unborn child
World Magazine
Polish media outlets have been abuzz this summer with the story of Bogdan Chazan, a prominent Warsaw doctor who refused to provide a woman with an abortion and was subsequently sacked. . .
. . .The Polish doctor’s troubles began in April, when a pregnant woman wrote to his maternity hospital in Warsaw, the Holy Family Hospital, asking for an abortion. She said her personal physician had detected severe developmental defects in the unborn baby. Chazan, a Roman Catholic who has served as director of the hospital for the past 10 years, wrote back, saying he could not provide an abortion due to a “conflict of conscience.” He provided an address to a hospice that could care for the baby after it was born. [Full text]