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Learning from Pinocchio

April 7, 2009 by Andrea Mrozek 1 Comment

This letter is in response to a freedom of conscience article in Saturday’s Post. I think it is cute:

Based on my informed moral and religious conscience, I am a doctor who refuses to refer for abortions. I refuse to co-operate with intrinsic wrongness.

How do I explain this to my own young children? Last night, I read them Walt Disney’s Pinocchio: ” ‘No, Pinocchio,’ she answered. ‘First, you must prove yourself to be brave, truthful and unselfish. You must also learn to choose between right and wrong.’

‘But how will I know what is right and wrong?’ he asked. ‘Your conscience will tell you,’ said the Blue Fairy. ‘What’s a conscience?’ asked Pinocchio. ‘That’s the small voice that people don’t always listen to.’ ”

Dr. Rene Leiva, Ottawa

When I listened to Dr. Garson Romalis explain why he does abortions last year, I thought it was interesting. I was struck by how he has layered so many justifications on top of his conscience–but ultimately justifying is what he was doing.  If he were Pinocchio his nose would be awfully long by now. Totally unwieldy, even.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: conscience, Dr. Rene Leiva, freedom of conscience, Garson Romalis, pharmacists

Should doctors be allowed to think?

February 27, 2009 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

One friend who is a doctor describes how a patient was shocked and offended when my friend said she wouldn’t provide or refer for abortion–and that she was acting on her conscience. The offended patient asked huffily what else she wouldn’t do because of her conscience. To which my friend replied–not much–she rather hoped she wouldn’t do anything as some sort of drone doctor on autopilot.

This going on in the USA and this in Alberta. Good to be ever vigilant on these things.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: freedom of conscience

Curtailing freedom of conscience for doctors in Ontario

August 17, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

The National Post reported here about the new document regulating physician conduct in Ontario. It’s called “Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code” and I just read it in its entirety. But even before I read it, I knew it couldn’t be good–take a look at the reason why this new document was created. It’s to respond to changes in the Human Rights Tribunals. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario says this:

In June 2008, changes were introduced to the Ontario Human Rights system, which will provide Ontarians with increased access to the Human Rights Tribunal. This new system is expected to result in a significant increase in the number of hearings into human rights complaints made to the Tribunal… In this climate of increased awareness of human rights, the College has developed a new draft policy for consultation, entitled Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code.”

 

Human Rights Tribunals across the country, should the College not have noticed, have become a national embarrassment for the limitations they place on freedom of speech. Human Rights Tribunals are where people who don’t have a hope of getting their case through a real court go.

 

The document itself is a disaster; it apparently subjugates physicians to bureacrats at Human Rights Tribunals. The document gives those bureaucrats, those who hold physician’s livelihoods in their hands, substantial leeway to do their job. It says:

The balancing of rights must be done in context. In relation to freedom of religion specifically, courts will consider how directly the act in question interferes with a core religious belief. Courts will seek to determine whether the act interferes with the religious belief in a ‘manner that is more than trivial or insubstantial.’ The more indirect the impact on a religious belief, the more likely the courts are to find that the freedom of religion should be limited.”

 

But no latitude for doctors for whom “The college advises to proceed cautiously,” when it comes to their moral or religious beliefs.

 

There is no freedom where there is no freedom of religion. And furthermore, unless we want our doctors to become robots constantly looking up “A Code” of some sort or another, we want them to integrate their morals with their practice.

 

This policy is ominous, and will harm further our already flagging medical system. Ironically, it forces doctors to refer where they cannot provide care themselves—cold, cold comfort to those who can’t get a doctor in the first place, or who find themselves on waiting lists already. In practice, squeaky wheels, those professional plaintiffs, will a) get faster treatment, b) get “treatment” faster for something that is likely a social lifestyle choice, like abortion or sex changes, and c) put those nasty doctors they don’t like out of business.

 

These are dangerous times for people like Dr. René Leiva, quoted in the National Post story. He says:

This would put a burden on physicians like myself to conform to a view that basically puts my conscience under somebody’s else’s power,” said Dr. Leiva. “And the key aspect is moral integrity and the right of physicians to act in a way that does not harm the patient.”

And he’s right. What we have here is an open door to professional complainers to put excellent doctors through the wringer or even out of business.

I have three extraneous points to make. As a patient, should this new policy go through I’d suggest people like myself lodge a complaint for every doctor who suggests abortion when a child is diagnosed in utero with a disability or Down’s Syndrome. After all, they just put their secular faith ahead of practicing medicine by suggesting a child ought to die for disability. Not the kind of care I expect to receive and certainly, references their own religious belief.

Secondly, now is the time to push for abortion to be removed from that list of things considered “medically necessary.” We all know it’s not, and the case is made all the more compelling by the host of pro-abortion folks who have said this. Pregnancy is not a disease; abortion is not a cure. No time like the present to remove it from the roster of funded procedures.

And lastly, on funding procedures: This type of policy fiasco produced by third-rate bureaucrats who wouldn’t know medicine, morality or what it means “to be religious” if the Pope himself had a sit-down chat with them—is made worse by our socialist “health care system.” (I’ll put that in quotation marks because it appears to work best when you are perfectly healthy.) If we had a system that flourished, where patients could actually find doctors, we would not need to compel doctors to refer through “policy”—without a shortage, patients would know they could just find another one. This type of “policy” is the direct result of the fact that our system is living in a time warp shared only by North Korea and Cuba: Places, incidentally, where “Human Rights Tribunals” would thrive, too. With this type of policy we’ll see treatment for the most politically astute, the most finicky, the most ideological—those who do, I’d hazard to say, have an illness, but of a more nebulous, shall we say, mental nature.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Dr. Rene Leiva, freedom of conscience

Show me the data

April 26, 2008 by Andrea Mrozek Leave a Comment

This today, in the Post. And more needed than ever, is a discussion on freedom of conscience for the medical profession. The comment below highlights the issue well. So I decided to make it a post of its own. Dr. Philip Ney responds to the question “In practice, how hard is it to be pro-life in medical schools these days?”

What about, how hard is it to be a pro-life professor in a medical school? Very hard and becoming harder. Why? Because medical schools are abandoning evidence-based medicine and the pro-life physicians are letting them. Abortion and sexual preference are now designated moral issues, which because they are such, cannot be treated or scientifically investigated.
Thank the Lord I was academically successful (full professor 4 times, academic and clinical dept. head etc.) and was an outspoken pro-lifer. I also lost 3 positions. I know it has become much harder in medical schools.
What would I advise students and young profs? Don’t keep quiet and don’t compromise. If God wants you to get to the top, you will. Remember Joseph and stick to your principles. If you are asked if you would perform an abortion, answer “of course, when and if it is therapuetically indicated and when and if there is good evidence abortion is beneficial and relatively free of harmful effects. Until that time, I will adhere to primum non nocere.”

Don’t forget that the onus of proof rests on those who propose or perform any medical proceedure to show: it is indicated, beneficial, relatively free of harm, done in good conscience, performed only with fully informed consent and then only when all other avenues, less invasive, have been tried and found wanting. Keep insisting, “show me the data.” You can rest assured there is no satisfactory evidence abortion by choice is good treatment and plenty of evidence it is harmful. Ask me for references if you wish.

 

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: Archbishop of Toronto, Canadian medical association, Centre for Cultural Renewal, charter of rights and freedoms, Dr. Philip Ney, Dr. Rene Leiva, freedom of conscience, Iain Benson, Physicians for Life, The vocation of the Catholic physician, Thomas Collins

I object!

March 20, 2008 by Véronique Bergeron Leave a Comment

I received this link from a good friend who is, incidentally, a pro-life physician.

I am always puzzled by statements that uphold freedom of conscience while denying the ability to act upon it. What worries me is not that our freedoms and liberties would be limited, but the absence of discussion as to why this particular freedom (conscience) should be limited and how.

In the case of pro-life physicians, they think that abortion is wrong and this thought is expressed by their refusal to have anything to do with it. This is socially relevant because abortion is legal in Canada and women are free to request one.

Many pro-life physicians don’t only believe that abortion is wrong for them but wrong period. Morally wrong, yes. But also medically wrong and this is where the issue gets really sticky: Physicians are never forced to perform procedures that would go against their patient’s best medical interest. If I suffer from arthritis and want my arm amputated and my physician thinks it can be controlled with acetaminophen, she is under no obligation to cut my arm off. If I want to treat my clinical depression with high doses of morphine, no physician has to give it to me. Yet, amputation and morphine are legal in Canada, and women are free to request them until the burly men in white come to escort them out of the building.

Now, what if a physician thought abortion was not in the best medical interest of a woman? The more I reflect on this question, the more the ACOG’s position starts looking like a pro-life doctor witch hunt. If you oppose abortion on medical grounds and are pro-choice, you are acting within the parameters of ethical medical practice. But if you oppose abortion on medical grounds and are pro-life, we will get your license. Troubling.

__________________

Rebecca adds:

Quite right. Roy Eappen at torydrroy.blogspot.com frequently writes on abortion, freedom of conscience, and doctors and has discussed this in the past.

Look, the whole point of doctors is to evaluate what treatments are medically necessary or appropriate. One reason antibiotics aren’t sold OTC is that most laymen without access to a lab don’t know if they actually need them. If you walk into a doctor’s office with a cold, whether or not you want antibiotics, the doctor shouldn’t give them to you. And if birth control pills, which are ethically and medically much less problematic than abortion, are subject to a doctor’s prescription to ensure that they’re medically appropriate for the woman who wants them, how on earth can abortion not be?

Or, we can dispense with the fiction that abortion on demand has anything to do with medical necessity. Even if terminating a pregnancy had the same moral status as getting breast implants or a nose job, we would have no business forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for it. Since it is on a different moral plane, to all but the most die-hard Pete Singer types, it is increasingly barmy that we ask medical professionals and taxpayers to treat abortion as if it were as neutral and necessary as a tonsilectomy.

__________________

Tanya is reminded: Dr. Chris Kempling has been on this bandwagon for several years. He’s quite adamant that the Canada Health Act is violated when abortion is covered by our tax dollars.

“The Canada Health Act says that to qualify for public funding, a health procedure must

1) be medically necessary,

2) be beneficial,

3) have benefits that outweigh the risks, and

4) be the result of informed consent.

Abortion, as it is currently practiced in Canada, meets none of the four requirements of the Canada Health Act. http://www.chp.ca/forum/Kempling/Abortion.htm

I rather tend to agree.

Filed Under: All Posts Tagged With: abortion, ACOG, Canadian Charter, freedom of conscience, physicians, pro-life

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