GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: Canadian MP tables bill to formalise MAiD conscience protections

domingo, 4 de noviembre de 2018

Canadian MP tables bill to formalise MAiD conscience protections

Canadian MP tables bill to formalise MAiD conscience protections

Bioedge

Canadian MP tables bill to formalise MAiD conscience protections

by Xavier Symons | 2 Nov 2018 |

A Canadian MP has tabled a bill that seeks to formalise legal protections for healthcare practitioners who conscientiously object to providing or facilitating Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).

David Anderson MP tabled bill C-418, the Protection of Freedom of Conscience Act, in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The bill would make it an offence to intimidate or try to force a health care professional to be involved in MAiD.

It also makes it an offence to fire or refuse to employ a health care professional for refusing to take part, directly or indirectly, in the provision of MAiD.

MAiD became legal across Canada in 2016. This bill addresses a legislative gap in protecting the right to refuse participation in MAiD, which is already guaranteed in the Criminal Code, but which lacks clarity for effective enforcement.

Anderson views the protection of conscience rights for medical professionals as part of protecting the fundamental freedom of conscience and religion guaranteed to all Canadians in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. “I believe it’s time to stand up for doctors and health care providers who aren’t willing to leave their core ethics behind when they’re at a patient’s bedside,” said Anderson. “Access to MAiD and the right to conscientious objection aren’t mutually exclusive.”

The Divisional Court of Ontario recently ruled that physicians must provide “effective referrals” for MAiD, even if they have a conscientious objection to the procedure.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

It happened so long ago that the exact details are dim in my mind, but I seem to remember that a nominee for the US Supreme Court nearly failed to score his dream job because of an alleged crime of attempted rape when he was a 17-year-old high school student. There was a huge controversy, wasn’t there? Demonstrations, twitterstorms, talking heads across the nation in a frenzy, politicians grandstanding...

Of course times were different way back then and public figures were held to a higher moral and legal standard. As the saying goes, "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." Nonetheless it is disturbing to read that the Democratic candidate for the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, casually told a journalist for The New Yorker that he assisted his mother to commit suicide in 2002. Assisting a suicide was a crime in California in 2002– and it still is if you are not a doctor. And at the time Newsom was not a callow teenager, but a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

The odd thing about this is that there has been almost no reaction. Assisting a suicide is just as much a crime as attempted rape and in this case Newsom has admitted that he did it. You would think that at least his Republican opponent would seize upon this blithe admission as a golden opportunity to knock off Newsom's Kennedy-esque halo.

But no one seems to care. What more do you need to show that assisted suicide has been normalised in California?