Maxim Institute Auckland, New Zealand
2014 Sir John Graham Lecture – When Freedoms Collide from Maxim Institute on Vimeo.
Controversy over doctors’ right to say “no”
The most controversial issues relate to abortion referrals or prescribing birth control.
CMAJ September 16, 2014 186:E483-E484; published ahead of print August 18, 2014
Religious groups, doctor’s organizations, ethicists and abortion rights advocates are raising concerns around the review of an Ontario policy that outlines, among other things, physicians’ right to object to patients’ requests for services on moral grounds.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario’s Physicians and Ontario Human Rights Code is up for its five-year review, with both public and expert opinion being sought.
On one side of the spectrum, faith groups and especially Catholic organizations are asking that the current policy – which allows physicians to opt out of non-emergency services they conscientiously object to – shouldn’t be amended.
While the policy covers any potential objection, the ones most discussed in the media have been related to abortion referrals or prescribing of birth control. [Full text]
The doctor who refused to abort
Q&A | Bogdan Chazan lost his post heading a Polish government–run maternity hospital after he said his conscience prevented him from killing an unborn child
World Magazine
Polish media outlets have been abuzz this summer with the story of Bogdan Chazan, a prominent Warsaw doctor who refused to provide a woman with an abortion and was subsequently sacked. . .
. . .The Polish doctor’s troubles began in April, when a pregnant woman wrote to his maternity hospital in Warsaw, the Holy Family Hospital, asking for an abortion. She said her personal physician had detected severe developmental defects in the unborn baby. Chazan, a Roman Catholic who has served as director of the hospital for the past 10 years, wrote back, saying he could not provide an abortion due to a “conflict of conscience.” He provided an address to a hospice that could care for the baby after it was born. [Full text]
Freedom from conscience
The Interim
On June 24, Joan Chand’oiseau saw a sign at the front desk of the Westglen Medical Centre in Calgary: “The physician on duty today will not prescribe the birth control pill.” The sign, put up only when Dr. Chantal Barry is the sole physician at the clinic, so offended the would-be birth-controller that she has since made the good doctor’s principled objection her casus belli for a modern-day, social-media crusade. The apparent slight against Chand’oiseau has now garnered national attention, with political candidates dutifully – if pitifully – conforming to the conventional wisdom: that some wrong has been done, and some remedy must be made. – [Full Text]
Defend Integrity
The Catholic Register
Doctors hold a favoured place in society because they are seen as models of compassion and integrity. They are admired as healers and moral leaders, virtuous people, widely respected. If you can’t trust your doctor, who can you trust?
But there is a legitimate concern that a current undertaking by the Ontario College of Physicians could lead to erosion of that stature. The College is conducting a review of its human-rights-code policy amid some pressure to purge religious freedom and conscience rights from everyday medical practice. First step is an ongoing consulting process that is seeking professional and public input.
Here is The Register’s input: leave the current policy alone and do nothing to undermine a doctor’s autonomy to assert their Charter rights of freedom of religion and conscience. [Full Text]