The Gobe and Mail
TORONTO — Reuters. The head of Canada’s biggest Catholic group opposed the country’s pending doctor-assisted suicide legislation in a statement to be read at 225 Toronto churches on Sunday, saying it was “unjust” to force doctors to act against their conscience.
“It is unjust to force people to act against their conscience in order to be allowed to practice as a physician,” Cardinal Thomas Collins, head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, said in the text of his statement.
Canada’s Supreme Court struck down a ban on assisted suicide in 2015 and gave lawmakers a year to come up with legislation to regulate the practice.
The newly elected Liberal government was given a four-month extension this year to a develop a national law for the practice, under which doctors opposed to assisted suicide have to recommend someone willing to perform it. . . [Full text]