Bodies regulating health-care professionals grappling with conscience rights on euthanasia
OTTAWA (CCN)
The legal ‘right’ to euthanasia need not conflict with conscience rights says a spokeswoman for Canadian Physicians for Life.
Faye Sonier, the executive director and general legal counsel for the national association of pro-life physicians, told an Ottawa gathering organized by Campaign Life Coalition Nov. 3 false dichotomies abound in discussions related to physician-assisted suicide.
“Either a patient suffers horrific final days, or the patient quote-unquote ‘dies with dignity’ through physician-assisted suicide,” she said. “Palliative care and palliative sedation are glossed over if they are even addressed at all.”
Sonier said another false dichotomy is: either patients “enjoy autonomy in their medical decisions making or physicians exercise their Charter right to conscientious objection.”
“According to some, both realities cannot co-exist,” she said.
Since the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the Carter decision, various bodies regulating health care professionals have been grappling with the issue of conscience rights and the legal right of patients to a physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.
Sonier noted the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario has opted to force physicians to make an effective referral and in some circumstances even participate in euthanasia or assisted suicide. In Prince Edward Island, however, the college there respects conscience rights when it comes to both participation and referral.
However, the Canadian Medical Association adopted a model that respects both conscience rights and patient choice that has been adopted by the physicians’ college in Alberta, Sonier said.
Under this model, a physician has a duty to provide a patient requesting euthanasia information on all options available to him or her. The physician must also advise the patient on how to contact a separate central information, counselling and referral service. That option received majority support at a CMA meeting last summer, she said. The option was based on a proposal put forward by a coalition of physicians’ groups, including Physicians for Life, the Christian Medical Dental Society and Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians’ Societies.
Sonier said the CMA policy reflects the reality under Canadian law that physicians “cannot be forced to participate in physician-assisted suicide, either by performance or through referral but that physicians can still respect patient autonomy and not prevent patient access to legally available procedures.”
“This is not an either/or situation,” she said.
Under the CMA policy, a doctor would be able to disclose his or her conscientious objection to physician-assisted suicide and discuss the request to ascertain if there is an underlying reason for the request such as depression or ineffective pain management, she said.
Sonier pointed out doctors may object to participating in physician-assisted death based on their conscience or creed, on the Hippocratic Oath, or on their professional judgement, such as concern about mental health challenges or family pressures.
“It’s important to note that even doctors who, in theory, fully support assisted suicide may have concerns about facilitating the procedure in certain cases,” she said.
