Tag: New Brunswick

Re: compulsory referral for abortion

3 December, 2014

The Honourable Victor Boudreau,
Minister of Health,
HSBC Place,
P. O. Box 5100
Fredericton, NB
Canada E3B 5G8

Dear Mr. Boudreau:

The Protection of Conscience Project is a non-profit, non-denominational initiative that advocates for freedom of conscience in health care. The Project does not take a position on the acceptability of morally contested procedures.

I am writing about a statement attributed to you in the Fredericton Daily Gleaner:

Health Minister Victor Boudreau: “No physician can be forced to [perform abortions], but at the same time there is a duty to refer to someone who will.”¹

It is instructive to compare this to a demand made by a panel of experts of the Royal Society of Canada:

Royal Society Panel: “. . . health care professionals are not duty bound to accede to [requests for euthanasia and assisted suicide] . . . but . . . they are duty bound to refer their patients to a health care professional who will.”²Since you are new to the position of Minister of Health, you are likely unaware of the fact that arguments used by those who demand that physicians be forced to refer for abortion are also used to demand that they be forced to refer for euthanasia or assisted suicide. It was for this reason that the Protection of Conscience Project joined an intervention in the case of Carter v. Canada in the Supreme Court of Canada.³

Counsel for the Project told the Supreme Court justices that what is demanded by the Royal Society experts (and, perhaps, the New Brunswick government?) is “precisely the sort of thinking that, in our submission, ought to be protected against.”⁴

Any number of physicians may agree to referral for abortion or other controversial procedures because they find that it relieves them of a moral burden or of tasks they find disturbing or distasteful. However, for others, as Holly Fernandez-Lynch has observed, referral imposes “the serious moral burdens of complicity.”⁵ They refuse to refer for abortion because they do not wish to be morally complicit in killing a child, even if (to use the terminology of the criminal law) it is, legally speaking, “a child that has not become a human being.”⁶

Just as these physicians refuse to facilitate killing before birth by referring patients for abortion, they and other physicians would refuse to facilitate killing patients after birth by referring them for euthanasia or assisted suicide. Influential academics and abortion and euthanasia activists want to force objecting physicians to do both.

Professor Jocelyn Downie of Dalhousie University was one of the architects of the Carter case,⁷ a member of the Royal Society panel, and a long-time advocate of compulsory referral for abortion.⁸ She was live- tweeting the hearing from the courtroom. Udo Schuklenk, one of her fellow Royal Society experts, was following the proceedings via a live audio-video link. He described most of the interveners as “Christian activist groups, some more fundamentalist than others.” After questioning the integrity of “the God folks,” he commented on the joint intervention involving the Project:

Then there was a lawyer representing groups called the Faith and Freedom Alliance and the Protection of Conscience Project. He . . . asked that the Court direct parliament to ensure that health care professionals would not be forced to assist in dying if they had conscientious objections. That, of course, is the case already today in matters such as abortion. However, this lawyer wanted to extend conscience based protections. Today health care professionals are legally required to pass the help-seeking patient on to a health care professional willing to provide the requested service. The lawyer wanted to strike out such an obligation. I am not a fan of conscientious objection rights anyway, so I hope the Court will ignore this.⁹ (Emphasis added)You can see clearly from this that Professors Downie, Schuklenk and their supporters hold that because physicians can be forced to refer for abortion, they can and ought to be forced to refer for euthanasia and assisted suicide. The weakness in this claim is the false premise that objecting physicians can or ought to be compelled to refer for abortion. Notwithstanding your assertions and the views of Dr. Haddad and Professors Downie and Schuklenk, this claim is sharply disputed, and for good reason.

Physicians are required to disclose personal moral convictions that might prevent them from recommending abortion, but not to refer the patient or otherwise facilitate the procedure. The arrangement preserves the integrity of physicians, and it safeguards the legitimate autonomy of the patient, who is free to seek an abortion elsewhere.¹⁰ But it also protects the community against the temptation to give credence to a dangerous idea: that a learned or privileged class, a profession or state institutions can legitimately compel people to do what they believe to be wrong.

Just how far this can go is now coming into focus, thanks to the Royal Society’s panel of experts and their supporters. They argue that it is not sufficient to simply encourage and allow willing health care professionals to kill patients. They demand that health care professionals be compelled to participate in and facilitate the killing of patients – even if they believe it to be wrong, even if they believe it to be murder – and that they should be punished if they refuse to do so.

Killing is not surprising; even murder is not surprising. But to hold that the state or a profession can, in justice, compel an unwilling soul to commit or even to facilitate what he sees as murder, and justly punish or penalize him for refusing to do so – to make that claim ought to be beyond the pale. It is profoundly dangerous, for if the state or civil society or professional organizations can legitimately require people to commit or aid in the commission of murder, what can they not require?

Particularly in view of the possibility that the Supreme Court of Canada might legalize physician assisted suicide and euthanasia, it is of grave concern that your comments can be taken to be supportive of the movement to develop and entrench a ‘duty to do what is wrong’ in medical practice. I know of no other profession that has accepted such a duty as a requirement of membership, and I am certain that the Liberal Party of New Brunswick does not and would not impose such a duty upon its members.

I have enclosed an abstract (in English and French) of the Project’s recent submission to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario about its policy, Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code, which is relevant in this case. The full submission, which is on line, is available in English only.

I note that a CBC news reported in July that the President of the New Brunswick Medical Association, Dr. Camille Haddad, included refusal to refer for abortion among alleged “barriers to access” to the procedure. The CBC report added, “The society says it wants the New Brunswick government to come up with a plan to address those barriers.”¹¹

If Dr. Haddad or others have urged you to adopt policies to promote access to abortion, that is outside the scope of Project concerns. However, I respectfully suggest that a plan to address alleged “barriers” must not include the suppression of freedom of conscience among physicians by compelling them to refer for abortion. The state has other means at its disposal to deliver the service.

Sincerely,

Sean Murphy, Administrator
Protection of Conscience Project

Notes
1. Huras A. “Abortions won’t be available in all hospitals.” Fredericton Daily Gleaner, 28 November, 2014

2. Schuklenk U, van Delden J.J.M, Downie J, McLean S, Upshur R, Weinstock D. Report of the Royal Society of Canada Expert Panel on End-of-Life Decision Making (November, 2011) p. 70 (Accessed 2014-12-02)

3.  Murphy S. “Re: Joint intervention in Carter v. Canada– Project Backgrounder.” Supreme Court of Canada, 15 October, 2014. Protection of Conscience Project

4.  Murphy S. “Re: Joint intervention in Carter v. Canada- Selections from oral submissions.” Supreme Court of Canada, 15 October, 2014. Protection of Conscience Project

5.  Fernandez-Lynch, Holly, Conflicts of Conscience in Health Care: An Institutional Compromise. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2008, p. 229.

6.  Criminal Code, Section 238(1). (Accessed 2014-12-02)

7.  In a 2007 symposium at Carleton University in Ottawa, Professor Downie asserted that the Supreme Court of Canada might be willing to reverse its 1993 ruling in Rodriguez. She outlined the strategy for a legal challenge under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and said that she was looking for an ideal test case to use to strike down the law. She published a paper and essay in 2008 that appear to have drawn from her Carleton presentation. The 2007 presentation and subsequent publication set out the strategy for the plaintiffs’ successful argument in Carter. Professor Downie assisted the plaintiffs in the Carter case in preparing their expert witnesses. “Rodriguez Revisited: Canadian Assisted Suicide Law and Policy in 2007.” Dalhousie University, ListServ Home Page, FABLIST Archives, Message from Rebecca Kukla, 6 February, 2007. “Symposium on physician assisted suicide.” (Accessed 2012-06-27); Schadenberg, Alex, “Dalhousie law professor seeks to re-visit Rodriguez court decision.” Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. Downie J, Bern S. “Rodriguez Redux.” Health Law Journal 2008 16:27-64. (Accessed 2012-06-27.) Carter v. Canada (Attorney General) 2012 BCSC 886, Supreme Court of British Columbia, 15 June, 2012. para. 124. (Accessed 2014-12-02)

8.  Rodgers S. Downie J. “Abortion: Ensuring Access.” CMAJ July 4, 2006 vol. 175 no. 1 doi: 10.1503/cmaj.060548 (Accessed 2014-12-02). McLeod C, Downie J. “Let Conscience Be Their Guide? Conscientious Refusals in Health Care.” Bioethics ISSN 0269-9702 (print); 1467-8519 (online) doi:10.1111/bioe.12075 Volume 28 Number 1 2014 pp ii–iv

9.  Schuklenk, U. “Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments in Charter challenge to assisted dying criminalisation.” Udo Schuklenk’s Ethx Blog Thursday, October 16, 2014 (Accessed 2014-12-02)

10.  Murphy S. “‘NO MORE CHRISTIAN DOCTORS.’ Appendix ‘F’- The Difficult Compromise: Canadian Medical Association, Abortion and Freedom of Conscience.” Protection of Conscience Project

11.  “New Brunswick Medical Society calls for abortion access plan: Doctors’ group says 2 doctor rule no different than any other procedure.” CBC News, 26 July, 2014 (Accessed 2014-12-02)