Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
Toronto Sun
The Ontario government has quietly amended its proposed Patients First Act with wording that appears to strengthen the rights of faith-based hospitals to opt out of assisted death.
The proposed amendment, which was not originally in the act, appeared when it was re-tabled last month after the legislature was prorogued. The act, according to the province, is aimed at improving health care for patients and their families. . . [Full text]
National Post
A leading bishop raised the possibility this week that Roman Catholics who consider doctor-assisted suicide may be denied last rites, as the Church considers it assisted suicide a “morally great evil” despite the fact it will soon be protected by legislation. In doing so, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast reminded us that Canada is a free country. At least, it should do so. And it should be.
Insofar as possible in Canada, where we have traditionally enjoyed liberty under law, we leave people to work things out for themselves. When we do have to deal with something through the power of the state, we discuss it freely both before and after a political decision is made, and coerce citizens only to the minimum compatible with the rule of law. Especially on as contentious a subject as euthanasia. . . [Full Text]
Catholic Register
OTTAWA – Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast, along with an imam and a rabbi, have written a joint-intervention in favour of physicians’ conscience rights.
“No Canadian citizen, including any physician, should ever be disciplined or risk losing their professional standing for conducting their work in conformity with their most deeply held ethical or religious convictions,” wrote Prendergast, Rabbi Reuven Bulka and Imam Samy Metwally in a July 31 letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
The College had been seeking input until Aug. 5 on its policy review entitled “Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code.” [Full Text]
Dr. Marc Gabel
President
College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario
80 College Street
Toronto, Ontario
MSG 2E2
Dear Dr. Gabel:
Re: Policy Review ‘Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code’
As the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario prepares to review its policy on physicians and the human rights code, we are deeply disturbed by the many negative voices that have been urging the College to force doctors to “check their ethics at the door”. It should be obvious that now, only weeks after Quebec legalized euthanasia, we have arrived at the worst possible time in Canadian history to turn doctors into mere mechanics whose duty is to blindly do the bidding of their clients.
With euthanasia legal in Canada’s second-largest province, the debate about euthanasia and assisted suicide on the national level and in other provinces will only intensify. It is crucial that we preserve the right of our doctors to refuse to participate in such services even if they are legal.
Euthanasia and assisted suicide continue to be regarded as deeply unethical by many world religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
What is legal is no longer necessarily moral, and we would be unwise to place all our trust in the law as our shield, or to train our doctors to disregard their own ethical limits. Indeed, the properly formed conscience of our physicians may sometimes be the last moral and ethical boundary that protects us and provides us with life-affirming options and alternatives that respect our human dignity.
Canadians pride themselves on being a society made up of many cultures, religions and ethnicities. The freedom and democracy that underpin our pluralist society lead us to affirm the right of all citizens to participate fully in roles of leadership and the professional life, including the medical profession. Any policy that would require doctors to contravene their consciences and to breach their most deeply held values would be outrageously exclusionary and unacceptable, as it would chase out of medicine those principled physicians who refuse to violate the central teachings of many of our largest and most ancient religions. For such doctors, referral for actions that they believe to be contrary to their medical judgement, ethical principles and religious beliefs would be as unacceptable as providing them, as it would be tantamount to outright cooperation with the action in question.
We refuse to believe that this is the kind of Canada that any of us would want to live in. The freedom of conscience is a basic human right recognized by many international agreements and protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is essential to a truly democratic society and foundational for the protection of all other human rights, including the freedom of religion.
As such, we strongly encourage the College, as it reviews its policy on this matter, to continue to protect an authentic freedom of conscience for all physicians. No Canadian citizen, including any physician, should ever be disciplined or risk losing their professional standing for conducting their work in conformity with their most deeply held ethical or religious convictions.
Sincerely yours,
Rabbi Reuben Bulka
Congregation Machzikei Hadas, Ottawa
Terrence Prendergast, S.J.
Archbishop of Ottawa
Imam Sarni Metwally
Ottawa Main Mosque
CC:
President of the Ontario Medical Association
President of the Canadian Medical Association
President of the College of Family Physicians of Canada