Tag: referral

Dáil committee not open-minded on Eighth Amendment, says bishop

Bishop Kevin Doran says health workers ‘have no recourse to conscientious objection’

Irish Times

Patsy McGarry

The Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment “would appear to have long since made up its mind” on repealing the constitutional ban on abortion, Bishop of Elphin Kevin Doran has said.

The chairman of the Catholic bishops’ consultative group on bioethics empathised with people who did not wish to co-operate with its proceedings. . .

Bishop Doran was speaking to The Irish Times at a conference, Abortion, Disability, and the Law, in Athlone on Friday. . .

Earlier Bishop Doran told the conference that the manner in which conscientious objection was being interpreted “in the so-called Protection of Life in Pregnancy Act gives rise to real concern”.

Doctors and nurses “are allowed under the Act to opt out of providing or participating in abortion, provided they refer the patient to someone else who will perform the procedure”, he said. “In other words, they are still required to participate in what they believe to be fundamentally immoral. Healthcare administrators have no recourse to conscientious objection.” [Full text]

 

Conscientious objection: Can a hospital refuse to provide treatment?

Baylor College of Medicine

Claire Horner

Canada recently legalized medical assistance in dying (MAiD), which allows patients to receive a lethal drug that they can self-administer, or be administered a lethal drug by an authorized clinician with consent of the patient. As provinces and territories work to create and clarify legal guidelines for providing MAiD, many Catholic hospitals have refused to offer it, citing opposition to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in Catholic moral teaching.

This controversy surrounding institutional conscience-based refusals raises an important question: Should a health care institution have the right to refuse to provide a particular treatment for conscience-based reasons? . . . [Full text]

New Zealand Attorney General apparently confused on issue of referral for euthanasia

Sean Murphy*

Chris Finlayson, the Attorney General of New Zealand, has issued a report on a euthanasia bill that has been introduced by Member of Parliament David Seymour, the leader and only sitting member of ACT New Zealand.

This bill includes protection of conscience provisions that were considered by Mr. Finlayson in his report (paragraphs 62-65).  The Attorney General stated that the provisions require an objecting medical practitioner to refer a patient to another physician for euthanasia, and acknowledged that this infringed freedom of conscience guaranteed by New Zealand’s Bill of Rights.  However, he believed this to be consistent with the Bill of Rights:

I consider that the limit is justified for the effective functioning of the regime for assisted dying created by the Bill.  In particular, I consider that the requirement to identify another medical practitioner is necessary to meet the objective of the Bill and is the most minimal impairment of the right possible.(para. 64)

The Attorney General appears to be confused on this point.

In fact, Section 7(2) of the bill requires only that the patient be told that he may contact the “SCENZ Group” (euthanasia coordination/facilitation service) to obtain the name of a euthanasia practitioner or physician willing to assist in the process.  It is up to the patient to initiate contact with the SCENZ Group, and the bill does not require a physician to assist the patient to do so.  This does not amount to referral to a euthanasia practitioner.

The distinction is important because physicians who object to euthanasia for reasons of conscience often refuse to refer patients for the procedure on the grounds that doing so would make them parties to homicide.  This issue is the focus of an important constitutional challenge in Canada, where the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario is attempting to compel unwilling physicians to make effective referrals for euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Ontario doctors fight law forcing them to help kill their patients

The Interim

Five doctors and three doctors’ groups were in an Ontario court June 13-15 arguing a policy from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) violates their Charter rights to freedom of conscience and religion. The CPSO forces doctors to refer patients for euthanasia and abortion, even when it violates their conscience or religion. Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government intervened on behalf of the college.

The 2015 CPSO policy requires that doctors who object on religious or conscience grounds to providing certain procedures such as abortion and euthanasia must give patients seeking these practices an effective referral. This means directly handing over a patient to another colleague who will follow through with an abortion or euthanasia request. The doctors argue this implicates them in the immoral practices to which they object. . . . [Full text]

 

Understanding Freedom of Conscience

Policy Options

Brian Bird*

The year 2017 marks the 150th anniversary since Confederation and the 35th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. By virtue of a court case in Ontario that might go all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada, 2017 may also be the year when freedom of conscience — until now a dormant Charter freedom — is brought to life.

In June, Ontario’s Divisional Court heard arguments in a case that challenges a policy in Ontario obliging physicians to provide an effective referral if they conscientiously object to performing a medical procedure. An effective referral means that the objecting physician must promptly direct the patient to a physician who will perform the procedure. In May, two of the lawyers representing the side that is challenging the policy outlined their position in Policy Options. In essence, they argue that the policy unduly infringes the freedom of conscience and religion of physicians who refuse on the basis of those Charter grounds to participate in medical procedures. . . [Full text]