Doctors won’t impede assisted death, says CMA in open letter

Dr. Cindy Forbes

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) would like to correct suggestions that timely patient access to assisted dying will be impeded by physicians choosing either not to provide the service or not to make a referral to a colleague or an agency.

The CMA would like to respectfully suggest that this is simply not true, and that many years of international evidence definitively shows this to be the case.

This should not be a debate between patient access or the right to conscientious objection by health care professionals; we absolutely can accomplish both. Put simply, there are other ways besides a referral to ensure access, without requiring a physician to violate his or her moral integrity. And none of these in any way involve abandonment of the patient in a time of great distress.

Access to assisted dying will not be constrained if we do not impose mandatory referral requirements on physicians who see referral as being complicit in the act itself. Nor does this in any way involve imposing the moral views of the physician on the patient he or she serves. . . [Full text]

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