Tag: human rights

UK human rights chairman wants freedom of religion restricted

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, has said that religious believers should not be free to adhere to their own tenets when acting in the public domain.  “Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law,” he said.  He agreed with the court ruling that forced the closure of all Catholic adoption agencies in Britain because they objected to adoption by persons identified as homosexual.  [The Telegraph]

 

Erroneous assumptions illustrated by editorial

Sean Murphy*

In an editorial titled, “Birth Control: Now a human right,” the Charleston Gazette has expressed support for the Obama administrations regulation that will force objecting employers to provide insurance coverage for “contraceptive services.”  The editorial illustrates five common unexamined and questionable assumptions frequently made by opponents of freedom of conscience in health care.

  • First: it assumes that ‘birth control’ and ‘contraception’ are equivalent terms; they are not.
  • Second: it assumes that contraception is a form a health care, something that many objectors deny.
  • Third: in failing to recognize the distinction that objectors make between contraception and treating illness or injury, it draws the erroneous conclusion that they might refuse to treat sexually transmitted diseases.
  • Fourth: it asserts that birth control (by which it clearly means contraception) is a “human right,” although this has not been legally established.
  • Finally: it suggests that employers who do not pay for employees’ birth control are interfering with their freedom.

 

EU Commissioner for Human Rights supports right to conscientious objection

Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, has issued a statement supporting the exercise of conscientious objection to military service.  He argues that objectors should be given a “genuinely civilian” alternative to compulsory military service, not imprisoned. [CE press release]

Rights Commission threat “blasphemy against the human spirit”

College of Physicians secrecy said unacceptable

News Release

For Immediate Release

Protection of Conscience Project

“Blasphemy against the human spirit.” That is how the Protection of Conscience Project describes a threat by Ontario’s Human Rights Commission to punish doctors who refuse to do what they believe to be wrong. The rebuke is found in a submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Citing writers and philosophers in the democratic tradition, as well as the landmark Morgentaler decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Project argues that to force doctors to act against their conscientious convictions is “to deprive them of their essential humanity.” It calls the proposed policy “profoundly offensive and demeaning.”

“To abandon one’s moral or ethical convictions in order to serve others is prostitution,” states the submission, “not professionalism.”

The brief denies that doctors who refuse to do what they believe is wrong are violating the Human Rights Code. It explains that they are concerned about “complicity in wrongdoing,” not race, sex or other patient characteristics.

The Project submission addresses the College draft policy, Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code. Deadline for comment on the policy was extended to 12 September following protests when news of it became public.

The President of the College told the National Post that the draft has been revised, but refuses to make it public. Project Administrator Sean Murphy finds College secrecy unacceptable.

“At least two substantial briefs reached the College only on Friday,” he said. “The National Post story appeared Saturday. It seems very unlikely that College officials could have considered either submission before revising the draft. This brings into question the validity of the consultation process.”

“But the more important issue,” he said, “is that decision-making that impacts fundamental freedoms should be conducted transparently, not secretly. Why keep the revised draft secret? Is there something to hide?”

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Related Links:

Project Submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario

Re: Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code

(11 September, 2008)