Tag: Will Johnston

Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario

Freedom of Professional Judgment

Canadian Physicians for Life

I would like to thank the CPSO for inviting comment about its Policy Statement #5-08, “Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code.”

The CPSO policy is fair and should not change.

Some, and I would hope most,  Canadian physicians wish to practice as professionals in a free country,  and to use their hard-won medical wisdom in the service only of the patient who presents with the unique circumstances of an individual life. This excludes treating the patient as a means to an end, political or otherwise, but rather the doctor’s judgment should be fearlessly focused on the physical and mental integrity of the patient.

In recent years various activists have attempted to impugn certain medical decisions in controversial situations, notably requests for abortion or for  potentially abortifacient drugs.  The activists wish to portray their ideological opponents as driven by purely private (usually religious) prejudices which have no place in medical practice.

The CPSO  should decline to be used by such activists as an instrument to suppress their critics, for in reality that is all that is going on with demands that physicians be forced to refer for, or perform, certain acts.

If a physician has come to the conclusion that induced abortion would be bad for a certain patient and fatal for her child, the CPSO is in a good position to recognize this opinion  as resulting from the healthy application of medical judgment.  Some activists wish to malign such decisions  by casting them  as  creatures  of a whimsical  “conscience” as opposed to an obedience to  “professionalism.”

These activists have a debased understanding of  both concepts.  The free application of a  good conscience directs  the doctor to offer selfless professional judgment to each human being he or she has the honour to advise and treat.

The concept of “conscience” should never be used to cloak an agenda hidden from the patient, and the concept of “professionalism” should never be turned on its head to subjugate professional judgment to a political ideology or to persecute those who show  ethical courage.

I wish the CPSO endurance in resisting the erosion of its members’  freedom to do the right thing for their patients.

Yours cordially,

Will Johnston MD
President, Canadian Physicians for Life
495 West 40th Ave.
Vancouver BC V5Y 2R5

Related:

Ethics Profiling in the Health Care Profession

Conscience Legislation  Needed to Stop Abuse of Authority

Ottawa
12 May, 2004

Will Johnston, MD President
Canadian Physicians for Life

The recent near-failing of a medical student at a Canadian university, solely because the student has pro-life convictions, shows how intolerant some people have become about choices they dislike. For years, Canadian     Physicians for Life has received anecdotal complaints from students who suspect that their medical school admission interview went badly after they truthfully answered questions which probed for pro-life beliefs. This recent case was blatant and completely documented, created undue anxiety for the student, and only ended after many months of unsuccessful appeals of the teachers’ intolerant actions. A modern democracy should have a keen interest in protecting vulnerable students from coercion by preceptors and professors who are unaware of, or insensitive to, the concept of freedom of conscience.

We don’t screen immigrants to Canada on the basis of race or religion. Why should such litmus tests be applied to citizens applying to enter key professions? Ethics profiling is no less objectionable than racial profiling.

Freedom of conscience, it seems, is now granted freely only to those whose views are acceptable to an authoritarian, secularist establishment. Others must endure the enormous costs and stress of legal challenges or implore sympathetic fellow citizens to petition those in power on their behalf. Until this situation is corrected, the Canadian experiment in pluralism will remain in a delayed adolescence.

Sincere proponents of multiculturalism and pluralism understand the importance of protection of conscience. But they must come to recognize that too many in positions of power need statutory reminders to treat fairly     those who disagree with them about the damage abortion does to women and children.

Basic conscience protection such as that provided in Bill C-276 begins to address the problems of abuse of authority and ethics profiling which lead to the kind of injustice seen in the recent case of the medical student. Such abuses must be explicitly treated in law, not left to an ad-hoc scramble by the victim and his or her friends.

The time is long overdue for the Parliament of Canada to follow the lead of countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, and 46 American states to protect and clarify freedom of conscience for Canadian health care workers. In addition to necessary employment protection, the proposed Canadian legislation corrects deficiencies found in many such laws by explicitly protecting persons of conscience from exclusion from health sciences education and from discrimination by professional licensing bodies.

Canadian Physicians for Life 29 Moore Street, R.R. # 2 Richmond ON K0A 2Z0 ph/fax: 613-728-LIFE (5433) info@physiciansforlife.ca

Med-school admission committees: tainted by pro-choice bias?

Williard Johnston, M.D.*

Recently, a worried pre-med student called me. A year ago her interview had gone badly, partly because her pro-life views became known to her interviewer, a woman whose pro-choice sentiments have been expressed to me personally in the past. Back for another try, her interview somehow ended up on the same topic.

A few months ago I met a new colleague at my community hospital. He reminded me of a conversation we had had several years ago, when he had phoned me for advice after losing his position at a public health clinic. He  had done well in the job, and was about to be hired permanently, when the non-physician office manager called him in for an “interview” and bluntly exposed his pro-life leanings. “It’s men like you who ruin the lives of  young women,” was her tactful observation. He was informed that he would be given no further sessions at the publicly funded downtown clinic, and was more or less told to pack his bags. Now in private practice not far from me, he still wonders if he did the right thing by accepting this treatment silently.

However, there is a far more basic threat to the ability of physicians to hold pro-life views.[Full text]