Service, not Servitude
The Chronicle Herald
Today (Dec. 17) marks two and a half years since the coming into force of Canada’s federal legislation on medical assistance in dying (MAiD).
In Nova Scotia, MAiD has now been requested in about 400 cases and provided in about 200. Unfortunately, there is one particularly notable gap in access to MAiD: St. Martha’s Regional Hospital, a publicly funded faith-based institution in Antigonish, refuses to allow MAiD within its walls. . . [Full text]
The Province
. . . an individual who is suffering intolerably and whose death is reasonably foreseeable has a constitutional right to medical assistance in dying (MAiD) if certain other criteria are met. . .
. . . most people in Vancouver’s West End will end up at St. Paul’s, a hospital run by Catholic-based Providence Health, which doesn’t allow MAiD to be performed in any of its facilities. Anyone wanting to access MAiD once at St. Paul’s must be transferred to Vancouver General Hospital or another willing facility. . .
. . . end the practice of forced transfers by insisting that all taxpayer-funded facilities, including Providence facilities, provide MAiD on site. . .[Full text]
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has been accused of elevating individual freedom above moral considerations after recently including abortion and assisted suicide among the ‘human rights’ that should be protected by states.
The committee’s ‘General Comment’ on the right to life, issued at the end of October, argued for the decriminalisation of abortion and the removal of restrictions that could subject women or girls to ‘physical or mental pain’ if they are unable to terminate their pregnancy. . .
‘States parties should not introduce new barriers and should remove existing barriers that deny effective access by women and girls to safe and legal abortion, including barriers caused as a result of the exercise of conscientious objection by individual medical providers,’ it said. . .
On assisted suicide, the committee stated that where this was legal, ‘robust’ legal safeguards should be in place to protect patients from abuse. . . [Full text]
Irish Independent
MORE than 2,500 women may seek a medical abortion from a GP or maternity hospital next year.
The figure is based on the number of early terminations recorded by UK clinics last year among women who travelled from the Republic of Ireland. . . [Full text]
The Irish Times
Family doctors believe the “rushed manner” in which abortion services are being introduced by the Government is “unacceptable and unsafe”, the National Association of General Practitioners (NAGP) has said.
It said it objected to pressure being placed on frontline staff “to get some sort of service in place by January, purely to protect the Minister for Health’s political reputation”.
NAGP president Dr Maitiu O’ Tuathail said GPs would “not be threatened or intimidated by Minister Harris”. . . [Full text]