The caricature of the conscientiously objecting physician

Objecting doctors are the bad guys, obstructing care.

How will disciplining conscientious doctors or driving them from the profession improve health care?

Physicians’ Alliance Against Euthanasia

Catherine Ferrier

Weary physicianCanadian doctors who object to directly causing the death of their patients, once the near-totality of the profession, have since the enactment of laws permitting “medical assistance in dying” suddenly become outliers. Polling data is unclear, polls are often biased, and there is no doubt that the euthanasia lobby had the ear of media, opinion leaders and politicians long before we knew what they were up to. Be that as it may, we are now told that euthanasia/MAiD is an accepted ‘medical treatment’ that must be provided to those who request it. Many provincial medical colleges, though not requiring doctors to euthanize patients themselves, do expect, to different degrees, that we facilitate their being euthanized by someone else. . . [Full text]

Physician Participation in Lethal Injection

Deborah W. Denno

On April 1, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a Missouri death-row inmate’s claim that executing him using the state’s lethal-injection protocol would violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” because blood-filled tumors in his head, neck, and throat could rupture and cause him to choke and suffer “excruciating” and “prolonged pain.”. . . the opinion’s unusual facts and circumstances throw into sharp relief the pervasiveness of physician participation in lethal injection despite the medical community’s professed condemnation of such involvement. . .

Denno DW. Physician Participation in Lethal Injection. N Engl J Med 2019; 380:1790-1791 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1814786

GPs call for ‘safe access zones’ for patients attending doctors

Zones needed to protect doctors and patients from protesters, says Irish council for GPs

The Irish Times

Paul Cullen

Members of the professional and training body for GPs have called for the provision of safe access zones for all patients attending their family doctor.

Members at the Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP) annual general meeting also agreed that a report be commissioned into how the organisation dealt with issues raised by members about the abortion legislation introduced last January.

The issue has been highly divisive for the ICGP; dozens of mostly anti-abortion doctors walked out of an extraordinary general meeting of the college held last December, in protest over procedures. . . [Full text]

Chairmen of U.S. Bishops’ Conference Commend Administration on New Regulations Protecting Rights of Conscience in Health Care

News Release

US Conference of Catholic Bishops

WASHINGTON—Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Chairman of the bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty, have issued a statement commending today’s adoption of new regulations that ensure existing laws protecting conscience rights in healthcare are enforced and followed.

Their joint statement follows:  

“We strongly commend the Department of Health and Human Services for adopting important new regulations to ensure that existing laws protecting the rights of conscience in health care are known, followed and enforced.

Though these laws were passed on a bipartisan basis and have been policy for years, the previous administration did not fully enforce them, and now they are increasingly being violated. Health care providers like New York nurse Cathy DeCarlo and medical trainees have been coerced into participating in the brutal act of abortion against their core beliefs, while churches and others who oppose abortion are being compelled by states like California to cover elective abortion—including late-term abortion—in their health plans. We are grateful that this Administration is taking seriously its duty to enforce these fundamental civil rights laws, and we look forward to swift action by HHS to remedy current violations in several states.

Conscience protection should not fluctuate as administrations change. It is essential that Congress provide permanent legislative relief through passage of the Conscience Protection Act in order to give victims of discrimination the ability to defend their rights in court. No one should be forced to violate their deeply held convictions about the sanctity of human life.”

Media Contact:
Judy Keane
202-541-3200

Death by organ donation: Euthanizing patients for their organs gains frightening traction

Organ donation is a selfless gift to those on transplant wait lists.

But what if we euthanized patients by harvesting their organs?

USA Today

E. Wesley Eli

How should society respond to the increasingly long list of people waiting for organs on a transplant list? You’ve no doubt heard of “black market” organs in foreign countries, but are there other options that should be off the table? 

If you were on a transplant list, would it matter to you if the organ was obtained from a living person who died because of the donation procedure itself? What if she had volunteered? 

Your thoughts on this topic have implications beyond the issue of transplantation.

As the former co-director of Vanderbilt University’s lung transplant program and a practicing intensive care unit physician, I see organ donation an selfless gift to those approaching death on transplant wait lists. 

However, I’m wrestling with the emerging collision between the worlds of transplantation and euthanasia. . . [Full text]