Friday, October 14, 2022

World Medical Association upholds Conscience Protections.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Recently the World Medical Association (WMA) upheld, after much debate, a position respecting conscience rights. Physicians from Canada and other jurisdictions proposed that the World Medical Association change their position to require that physicians provide an effective referral, where euthanasia is legal. An effective referral would require physicians to be complicit in the Act.

Several committed physicians spoke out in support of conscience rights and lobbied national medical associations to uphold conscience rights. These physicians took the time to organize a strong response and to travel to the WMA meetings to support conscience rights. Thank you.

Canada's parliament recently defeated Conscience Rights Bill C-230 based on a party line vote with most of the Conservatives, including Pierre Poilievre, supporting the conscience rights and nearly every Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québécois MP voting against it. How your MP voted on C-230 (Link), the battle for conscience rights is far from over.

The WMA victory underlines the importance of continuing the fight to protect the conscience rights of medical professionals. If conscience rights cannot be protected, at this time, federally, then we will renew our commitment at the provincial or state level.

Conscience rights protect medical professionals from being forced to be complicit in acts that they consider wrong, but conscience rights are also important for patients.

All of us need to be assured, in our time of need, that our doctor will respect our opposition to being killed. You need a physician who respects your values. If you are experiencing a difficult medical condition you may become very depressed and ask for something that you would never otherwise request. You need a physician who is free to protect you at the lowest time of your life.

Conscience rights protect medical professionals and conscience rights protect you.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good news from the WMA! Rest assured… the other side will keep pushing!

Maureen said...

Thank God for some good news but we must never quit fighting back!!

Yvonne Finn said...

A victory even one as tenuous as this is still a victory! It goes to show we should never give up because right is right, and, like freedom it must be constantly guarded.
Thanks for all those who watch, pray and work!

Dave Sidloski said...

Without conscience rights, good medical judgement becomes impossible. A doctor’s moral sense and his medical judgement are not quite the same thing, but they are inseparable. A wise patient will want to know that his physician is guided by his conscience - which is the same as saying that the physician is bringing his whole being to his practice of medicine. I can’t trust a doctor who has agreed to set his best judgement aside regarding what is best for me as a human being when helping me work through my health problems. Legislation that overrides a doctor’s conscience in decision-making destroys the judgement of doctors, and patients are right not to trust doctors who condescend to practice medicine under such conditions. Where does that leave people in Canada today who have medical needs? Bad law seems to have rendered good medical practice illegal. And so we must seek medical help from doctors with integrity outside the system - good retired doctors or doctors who have been spit out by the system for not going along with medical tyranny. This is our situation in Canada, but happily real medicine is being practiced in many places throughout the world, including Africa, Asia, and South and Central America. This should give us great hope. The decline of Western medicine in Europe and North America is critical and complicated, but we in Canada must not give up - we must demand real medicine by refusing to settle for the cheap and coercive substitute of medical technocracy.