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The Right of Medical Conscience Is Fast Coming to an End

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Until recently, physicians who did not want to participate in human life-ending practices — abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide — were allowed space to practice Hippocratic medicine regardless of the legal status of these procedures.

But that right of medical conscience is fast coming to an end, with laws starting to be passed that threaten doctors with what I call "medical martyrdom": do the deadly deeds (or be complicit via referral to a doctor who’s willing) or don’t practice medicine.

Victoria, Australia, has that law for abortion and Quebec for euthanasia — now threatening to go national with Canada’s Supreme Court conjuring a right to be euthanized out of the country’s Charter of Rights. 

But about a doctor’s right of conscience to refuse participation in killing activities? They will be forced.

Most Canadian palliative-care physicians don’t wish to participate in assisted suicide. A recent survey of palliative specialists found that a majority wants no part of it. From the Canadian Medical Association Journal article:

Dying Canadians should not assume palliative care doctors will assist them if they choose to end their lives, because the majority of those currently practising don’t want that role, says the president of the Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians.

"Palliative care physicians don’t see assisted suicide as part of palliative care," Dr. Susan MacDonald told CMAJ in an interview from St. John’s. "Physician-assisted suicide should happen separate from palliative care — absolutely."

A decent society would not force them. But the culture of death brooks no dissent.

Provincial medical associations in Canada are lining up against permitting doctors a moral or religions conscience right to opt out of killing. I already wrote about the Saskatchewan-proposed medical martyrdom ethical rule. Now, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario:

The revised policy sets out physicians’ existing legal obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code, and the College’s expectation that physicians will respect the fundamental rights of those who seek their medical services.

The policy also sets out the College’s expectations for physicians who limit the health services they provide due to their personal values and beliefs.

A key feature of the revised policy is that it requires physicians to provide their patients with an effective referral to another health-care provider for those services the physician chooses not to provide for reasons of conscience or religion. An effective referral means a referral that is made in good faith with a to supporting, not frustrating or impeding, access to care.

This is a blatant effort to drive all pro-life and Hippocratic-believing doctors out of medicine.

Anecdotally, I am increasingly being told stories of Christian and other identifiably pro-life types being black-balled from medical, nursing, and pharmaceutical schools. Indeed, I tell such students to keep quiet about those beliefs — for the sake of their future careers. 

We are approaching a time when the only people who can become doctors will be those willing to kill.

Image: The Jack Pine, by Tom Thomson (1877 – 1917) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.

Wesley J. Smith

Chair and Senior Fellow, Center on Human Exceptionalism
Wesley J. Smith is Chair and Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. Wesley is a contributor to National Review and is the author of 14 books, in recent years focusing on human dignity, liberty, and equality. Wesley has been recognized as one of America’s premier public intellectuals on bioethics by National Journal and has been honored by the Human Life Foundation as a “Great Defender of Life” for his work against suicide and euthanasia. Wesley’s most recent book is Culture of Death: The Age of “Do Harm” Medicine, a warning about the dangers to patients of the modern bioethics movement.

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