Canada Court: Doctors Must Euthanize, Abort, or Refer

by Wesley J. Smith
Evolution News and Science Today

Excerpts:

Here’s the story: The Canadian Charter (Constitution) guarantees “freedom of conscience and religion” — a stronger and more explicit protection of religious liberty than our First Amendment.

After the Supreme Court created a right to euthanasia, Ontario passed a law requiring doctors to kill legally eligible patients who want to die or provide an “effective referral” if they have moral objections — i.e., procure a doctor known by the dissenter to be willing to euthanize patients.

Referring Equals Complicity

Catholic and other religious doctors sued to enforce their Charter liberties. Referring equals complicity, the doctors argued, and thus the law forces them to violate their religious beliefs and consciences.

In one of the world’s most important “medical conscience” rulings, a trial judge admitted the doctors’ Charter rights were indeed infringed. But he ruled that a right (nowhere mentioned in the Charter) to “equal and equitable access” to legal and government-funded medical interventions trumped doctors’ freedom of religion.

Now a Court of Appeals has affirmed, ruling that doctors must not only euthanize or refer, but also abort or refer, and provide any other controversial legal service that a patient might want or refer — their religious freedoms or moral consciences be damned.

From, Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada v. College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario:

The medical procedures to which the appellants object (an objection shared to varying degrees by the individual appellants and members of the appellant organizations) include: abortion, contraception (including emergency contraception, tubal ligation, and vasectomies), infertility treatment for heterosexual and homosexual patients, prescription of erectile dysfunction medication, gender re-assignment surgery, and MAiD [medical aid in dying, i.e. lethal injection euthanasia]. It is impossible to conceive of more private, emotional or challenging issues for any patient.

When it comes to taking human life in abortion and euthanasia, it is impossible to conceive of a more private, emotional, or challenging issue for religiously and morally opposed doctors — particularly when the physician would consider it a grievous sin impacting her immortal soul to have any part in it. And those beliefs are supposed to be protected explicitly by the Charter!

Not only that, when most doctors got into medicine, euthanasia was a felony! But who cares? Times change and doctors must change with them because patients are “vulnerable”:

The vulnerable patients I have described above, seeking MAiD, abortion, contraception and other aspects of sexual health care, turn to their family physicians for advice, care and, if necessary, medical treatment or intervention. Given the importance of family physicians as “gatekeepers” and “patient navigators” in the health care system, there is compelling evidence that patients will suffer harm in the absence of an effective referral.

The point of opposing medical conscience is to drive pro-life and Hippocratic Oath-believing doctors out of medicine. The Court goes there, telling doctors who don’t want to euthanize, abort, facilitate sex change, etc., that they can always go into hair restoration:

[In] the following areas of medicine…physicians are unlikely to encounter requests for referrals for MAiD or reproductive health concerns, and which may not require specialty retraining or certification: sleep medicine, hair restoration, sport and exercise medicine, hernia repair, skin disorders for general practitioners, obesity medicine, aviation examinations, travel medicine, and practice as a medical officer of health.

So, an experienced and skilled oncologist who doesn’t want to kill can implant hair plugs instead of curing cancer. Brilliant.

And if they won’t do that, get the hell out of medicine.

The appellants have no common law, proprietary or constitutional right to practice medicine. As members of a regulated  and publicly-funded profession, they are subject to requirements that focus on the public interest, rather than their interests. In fact, the fiduciary nature of the physician-patient relationship requires physicians to act at all times in their patients’ best interests, and to avoid conflicts between their own interests and their patients’ interests.

Read the full article at Evolution News and Science Today

Is the U.S. Next?

Medical Conscience for Me, but Not for Thee

by Wesley J. Smith
Evolution News and Science Today

Excerpts:

The New York Times has published an opinion column by cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar who decries the increased enforcement of medical conscience.

But he actually promotes a one-way conscience right that favors protecting the predominant ideological views of the medical intelligentsia, while forcing dissenters to sacrifice their own religious and moral beliefs.

Bioethics Authoritarianism

First, he endorses “futile care,” the bioethics authoritarianism that allows doctors to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment based on the doctor’s values. From, “Can Doctors Refuse to Treat a Patient?”:

A consensus exists among legal and bioethics experts that doctors can refuse to provide treatment in certain situations. For example, courts have ruled that doctors may refuse to treat violent or intransigent patients as long as they give proper notice so that those patients can find alternative care. Forcing doctors to treat such patients, courts have said, would violate the 13th Amendment’s prohibition on involuntary servitude….

Doctors may also refuse to provide treatment if it conflicts with good medical practice. Physicians in intensive-care units, for example, routinely limit treatment they believe will provide no benefit, especially in cases of terminal illness.

Did you see the sleight of hand there? The doctor may think that living longer provides “no benefit” and limit treatment even though the patient/surrogate/family does.

That’s not a medical decision, it is a value judgment.

So in a situation of life and death, Jauhar believes the doctors’ values should trump those of the patient — presumably, even if stated by a competent patient or instructed in an advance directive.

But when it comes to elective interventions — such as abortion, assisted suicide, and transgender interventions — Jauhar is all for “patient rights”!

Doctors have an obligation to adhere to the norms of their profession. In my view, as long as treatments are safe and approved by medical organizations, doctors should have limited leeway in refusing to provide them. Patients’ needs should come first. At the very least, patients whose medical needs violate a doctor’s deeply considered beliefs should receive a timely referral to an alternative provider.

So a pediatrician who believes circumcision is child abuse — as some do — should be forced to remove his patient’s foreskin because it is approved by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)? No! That is an elective procedure. The parents can find another doctor on their own.

Jauhar’s advocacy would also force a doctor who believes it is wrong — and indeed, harmful — to inhibit the normal onset of puberty in a child diagnosed with gender dysphoria, to do it, procure a willing doctor, or face litigation or professional discipline. After all, puberty blockers are now considered a norm for treating transgender pre-adolescents by the AAP.

Read the full article at Evolution News and Science Today