Pro-life doctor who refused abortion to be sacked

 Polskie Radio

Warsaw’s mayor has announced that Prof. Chazan’s contract will be “terminated in accordance with the law,” after he refused a termination to a woman carrying a foetus with severe defects.

Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz announced on Wednesday the findings of a report into the Roman Catholic doctor’s activities at the Holy Family hospital in the Polish capital, after Chazan, who is director at the hospital, refused the woman an abortion – citing a ‘conscience clause’ – but then declined to refer the woman to another hospital or physician. [Full text]

Poland asks: should a doctor serve God, or patients?

Reuters

Marcin Goettig and Aneta Pomieczynska

(Reuters) – In April this year, a pregnant woman asked Professor Bogdan Chazan, director of Warsaw’s Holy Family Hospital, for an abortion because her own physician had diagnosed her unborn child with grave health problems.

Chazan sent the woman a letter saying he could not agree to an abortion in his hospital because of a “conflict of conscience,” and instead gave the woman the address of a hospice where, he said, the child could get palliative care once born.

The baby was born at a different hospital with, according to a doctor there, severe head and facial deformities and a brain that was not viable, conditions which the doctor said would result in the child’s death within a month or two. . .

. . . On Wednesday, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, the mayor of the Polish capital, said she was firing Chazan from the hospital on the grounds that he did not have the right to refuse the abortion and did not inform the woman about the options for getting a termination. [Full text]

Canadian Doctors Should Not be Forced to Do Abortions or Provide Birth Control

LifeNews

Reproduced with permission

Mike Schouten

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) is asking for public input as part of its regular review of policy guidelines. At issue in this current review is the right of doctors to refuse to provide certain treatments based on religious or moral grounds.

There will always be some tension between the moral convictions of an individual medical professional who adheres to his or her own worldview and the different procedures that are legally available in a pluralistic society. The current CPSO guidelines recognize this tension. In an effort to balance competing interests, the policy allows doctors to refrain from performing non-emergency procedures should the procedures violate their individual conscience.

It is always beneficial to review policies and guidelines, especially those pertaining to the health and wellbeing of Canadians. But the current review and discussion over CPSO guidelines is not about improving care for residents of Ontario. Instead, it seems to be about forcing medical professionals to set aside their own worldview and adopt a conflicting one.

To be clear, we are not talking about providing health-care services where a patient’s life is at risk. No, when a discussion about conscience-protection takes place it is almost always surrounding issues such as like infant male circumcision, prescribed birth control, certain types of medications, medicinal marijuana, or an abortion procedure. In the future, this list may very well include euthanasia or assisted suicide.

On occasion, the tension between the conscience of a doctor and the desire of a patient is experienced in a tangible way. Kate Desjardins is a 25-year-old Ottawa resident who, earlier this year, entered a walk-in clinic to have her prescription for birth control renewed. However, this was not a routine visit. As Ms. Desjardins quickly found out, the doctor on duty did not prescribe contraceptives. Although Ms. Desjardins’ life wasn’t in danger and she could most certainly have secured a prescription renewal at any number of surrounding clinics, her experience has been highlighted by those pushing to have the conscience objection nullified by the CPSO.

It’s not about availability of services, but about imposing morality on all physicians.

Clearly this isn’t about adequate and timely access to health-care, both of which were still available to Ms. Desjardins. Essentially, this is about a patient’s right to access all medical services from any doctor of his or her choosing. It’s not about availability of services, but about imposing morality on all physicians, to the point where doctors need to violate their own conscience in order to serve their patients.

Justin Trudeau was chastised from a wide variety of Canadians when he decided to impose his worldview on the Liberal Party of Canada by forcing Liberal MPs to violate their consciences in the event that an abortion law ever made it to a vote in Parliament. The same principle applies in the present debate surrounding conscience protection for physicians. This is a battle about conflicting worldviews, not adequate access to healthcare. The target of leftist ideologues include all those who hold to a worldview (religious or otherwise) opposed to their own. So, who actually is forcing their religion on whom?

Canadians are not perishing because doctors won’t take part in elective, non-emergency medical procedures

On the one hand, we have doctors arguing for their freedom of conscience, which is guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And on the other, we have patients who believe they have the right to a medical procedure from any physician of their choosing. If the object of the CPSO guidelines is to balance rights and obligations, then taking away conscience objections would throw balance out the window altogether.

Conscience-protection guidelines are vital if we are to have a well functioning and vibrant health care system. As Dr. Margaret Somerville, the founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University said recently, “Do you really want to be treated by a doctor who doesn’t care if he thinks that he’s doing something unconscionable or unethical or immoral?”

Canadians are not perishing because doctors won’t take part in elective, non-emergency medical procedures. That someone was offended because they had to walk a few extra blocks to renew their birth control prescription does not justify the CPSO forcing doctors to contravene their Charter-protected freedom of conscience.

O Canada, Glorious and Free!

Canadian Healthcare Network

Reproduced with permission

Cristina Alarcon

The wrath of the media has fallen upon a handful of doctors—most recently a female Calgary practitioner—for politely informing their patients (as per College requirements) that they will not prescribe the pill.

Nevermind that there is no lack of doctors or clinics within a short distance who will comply. Ah, the politics of birth control!

The most recent attack comes from a retired ob/gyn who appears to have forgotten the lyrics of our beloved anthem (See O Canada! We must stand on guard for women’s reproductive rights).

Where is the glorious and free?

Forgotten is the reality that we live in a pluralistic, democratic society, and that true Canadian liberalism disagrees with the dogmatic view that all must think alike.

To force a doctor to act against his conscience is to open wide the doors to state-controlled medicine

Should freedom of conscience and religious belief not be protected in a liberal democracy? Should a woman’s so-called reproductive rights trump the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by our Canadian Charter (see section 2 [a]).

As well stated by blogger Brian Lilly, only a revisionist such as Trudeau Jr. would twist the words of his own father to claim that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was meant to grant women abortion rights.

But no matter what your stance on abortion, there are certain rights without which society as we know it would cease to be.

Thus, the rights of freedom of conscience and religion are inalienable and universal.

They derive from the unique dignity of the human person and constitute the bedrock on which all other human rights rest—the foundation of every truly free society.

No need to remind ourselves that the suppression of these rights contributed to the most gruesome monstrosities ever carried out by otherwise good doctors under the Nazi regime.

To his credit, the ob/gyn who wrote the O Canada piece does defend the wearing of turbans and openness to diversity. He also wisely states that if one is moral, one does not deliberately harm.

But to harm the conscience of people by forcing them to participate in something they find deplorable, even if legal, is to break the very fabric of society.

It would force doctors to kill patients if that were legal; it would force them to prescribe the newest medical fad diet pills; it would force those who (for non-religious reasons) don’t believe in pumping women with exogenous hormones to do so, no matter what the known cancer and other health risks.

And to force a doctor to act against his conscience is to open wide the doors to state-controlled medicine, reducing the professional to a well-paid, educated puppet-on-a-string.

Cristina Alarcon is a Vancouver pharmacist and writer. She holds a master’s degree in bioethics.

Pastoral Guidance on the Implementation of the Reproductive Health Law

Conference of Catholic Bishops of the Philippines

While we would have wanted the Supreme Court to nullify the RH Law (Republic Act No. 10354), we must now contend with the fact that it has ruled rather to strike down important provisions of the law in deciding Imbong v. Ochoa, G.R. 204819 (April 8, 2014) and companion cases. It is our pastoral duty to pass the necessary information and instruction to our Catholics who, as health care workers (physicians, nurses, midwives, medical aides, medical technologists, etc.), are employed in health facilities, whether public or private, so that they may know what their rights are under the law as passed upon by the High Court. . .
Full Text