Bill to decriminalize abortion passes House committee

The NM Political Report

Susan Dunlap

The House Health and Human Services Committee approved a bill that would decriminalize abortion by a vote of 8 to 3, including one Republican who crossed the aisle.

State House Rep. Phelps Anderson, a Republican from Roswell, sided with the seven Democrats on the committee who voted yes to HB 7. Just before the bill went to vote, Anderson expressed some of his views.

“Many people who have spoken to me have expressed strong opinions but I find myself saying I’m not sure one voting yes or no changes anything that is very important to me and, secondly, the issues that have been raised are not encompassed within this bill,” Anderson said.

HB 7 will, if it passes the full New Mexico Legislature, repeal a law written in 1969. The law bans abortion except for cases of incest, rape, the life of the patient or severe mental or physical problems for the fetus. The law is not enforceable because of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision. . . . [Full text]

Atticus Finch Teaches a Lesson in Conscience Rights

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule,” he says in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, “is a person’s conscience.”

National Catholic Register

Andrea Piciotti-Bayer

Atticus Finch Teaches a Lesson in Conscience Rights

When my dearest friend asked me to join her virtual book club, I said “Sure!” She’s the kind of friend for whom I’d walk over broken glass — but, moments after I said yes, I thought to myself: “What was I thinking? I’ve got seven school-aged kids still at home, mountains of laundry to do every day, and a full-time job.”

But, because our friendship means so much to me and I am not one to walk away from a “Sure!”, I’ve stayed in the book club. And I’m glad I did.

Thank goodness for audiobooks. I’ve been able to keep up with the “reading” as I walk the family black Labrador puppy. (Again, what was I thinking?) The third book in our list is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I know everybody’s supposed to have read this in high school, but I can’t honestly remember whether I did. For me, Atticus Finch had always been the irresistible Gregory Peck. . . [Full text]

Federal Court Upholds Conscience Protections for Doctors

The Daily Signal

Nicole Russell

Amid a flurry of activity and controversy with the incoming Biden administration, there was still a major victory for religious freedom and conscience protection last week.

On Jan. 19, a federal court, citing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, upheld conscience protections for physicians and struck down the transgender mandate that ordered doctors to perform transgender interventions when doing so violated the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs. 

The case, Sisters of Mercy v. Azar, is hardly well-known, but no less newsworthy. The plaintiffs are an order of Catholic nuns, a Catholic university, and Catholic health care organizations. They sued the government, challenging Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which forced doctors to perform transgender interventions against their sincerely held religious beliefs or even sound, medical advice. . . [Full text]

Physicians should not be forced to make assisted-death referrals

Bill C-7, passed by the House of Commons and now in front of a Senate committee, raises even more ethical challenges than the original legislation. Doctors who object should not be compelled to support it.

Ottawa Citizen

Thomas Bouchard, Ramona Coelho,  Leonie Herx

Bill C-7 is changing the landscape of Canadian medicine. With this legislation, the federal government is expanding medically administered death (MAiD) to individuals not at end of life and with no requirement for MAiD to be a last resort in patient care. Under Bill C-7, a patient with a chronic illness or disability could receive MAiD when therapeutic options for care that could alleviate suffering have not been provided.

While some physicians may decide to aid in ending the life of their patient who is not dying, what will become of physicians who do not believe that administering death is good medicine?

Professional medical opinions are rooted in extensive medical knowledge, years of training and practice, and an individual practitioner’s conscience. It is our conscience that navigates us through the ethics necessary for providing each patient with the best medical advice for a given situation.

Medicine is not a department store. Our role is not to check the storeroom to see if we have the display item you like in the size and colour you desire. . . [Full text]

After all, what is really wrong with apotemnophilia?

BioEdge

Reproduced under Creative Commons Licence

Michael Cook*

Apotemnophilia is one of those words which may be useful in Scrabble© but seldom come up in day-to-day discourse, let alone medical practice. However, it is an increasingly contested issue in bioethics, though better known as BIID, Bodily Integrity Identity Disorder, or the amputation of healthy limbs.

BIID is a rare psychiatric condition in which people know that their leg (for instance) is normal and healthy, but still feel that it is not part of their identity; they want it cut off, even though they realise that they will become disabled. Oddly enough, however, they often do not seem to mind wearing a prosthesis to recover some of the limb’s functionality.

In a provocative article in The New Bioethics, Richard Gibson, of the University of Manchester Law School, in the UK, asks whether ultimately there would be anything wrong with BIID if a prosthesis provided equal or better functionality. . . [Full text]