Activist complains that Catholic hospitals won’t facilitate assisted suicide
In an opinion piece published in the Seattle Times, Tom Preston, a retired physician who was one of the leaders of the successful assisted suicide lobby in Washington State, complains that Catholic hospitals in the state will not facilitate assisted suicide. “Throughout Washington,” he claims, “doctors are being silenced and forced to adhere to religious rules that prevent any participation in death with dignity,” and that “many Washingtonians are denied access to legal and humane end-of-life medical care.”
Writers with a different view of assisted suicide would respond that Catholic hospitals provide “humane end-of life medical care” as well as “death with dignity,” though not assisted suicide. In any case, the position taken by Preston demonstrates that the legalization of morally contentious procedures like euthanasia and assisted suicide tends to generate political and social pressures inimical to freedom of conscience among health care workers and institutions.
Philippines government demands referral by objecting physicians even if not “right”
In the closing hearings into the controversial Reproductive Health Law, judges of the Philippines Supreme Court questioned a provision in the law that makes it a crime to provide “incorrect information” about contraceptives. When Senior State Solicitor Florin Hilbay explained that the Philippines Food and Drug Administration will determine what is “correct,” a judge pointed out that this would mean that no dissent from that would be allowed. Another judge raised the possibility of the imprisonment of physicians who disagree with the FDA about the safety of a drug.
Hilbay also claimed that objecting physicians have a “professional obligation” to facilitate the provision of the services to which they object by referral, asserting that refusal to refer makes a patient a “victim.” He insisted on this even though he admitted that referral might not be “right.” The court gave lawyers for both sides 60 days to submit memoranda concerning their arguments. [Manila Standard] [Philippine Daily Inquirer] [Inquirer.net]
Letter: If society wants to legalize euthanasia, physicians should not be the ones to carry it out
The Gazette
Physicians who refuse to be co-opted into assisting patients accelerate their death are not, as Dr. Dave Lambert seems to imply, medical dinosaurs. And by rejecting his option, we are most certainly not trying to save or prolong lives “at all costs,” that is, we are not vitalists. One can simultaneously reject both vitalism and euthanasia. . . [Full text]
Australian regulator misrepresents physician obligations
Claim that practitioner codes require referral disproved by Australian Medical Association
According to a report in The Examiner, a representative of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Association told a Tasmanian legislative committee that physicians who object to a procedure for reasons of conscience are obliged by professional codes of ethics to refer patients to another physician. Lisa McIntosh was addressing the Committee concerning a proposed Reproductive Health Bill.
Her assertion is contradicted by a submission by the Australian Medical Association Tasmania, which protested the section of the bill that would force objecting physicians to facilitate morally contested procedures by referral. The AMA Tasmania submission included quotes from the AMA Code of Ethics and a document from the Medical Board of Australia Good Medical Practice to demonstrate that the draft legislation information paper falsely claimed that there was a duty to refer.
The Committee also heard from Catholic Archbishop Adrian Doyle, whose concerns about the proposed bill included the mandatory referral provision.