Project Administrator, Author at Protection of Conscience Project Library

The “Normalization” of Euthanasia in Canada: the Cautionary Tale Continues

Leonie Herx, Margaret Cottle, John Scott

Extract
This paper will balance recent portrayals in the popular and medical media that imply only a positive impact as a result of the introduction of euthanasia into Canada’s health system [3–4]. Evidence will be presented to demonstrate that there are significant negative and dangerous consequences of this radical shift for medicine, and particularly for palliative medicine. These include the widening and loosening of already ambiguous eligibility criteria, the lack of adequate and appropriate safeguards, the erosion of conscience protection for health care professionals, and the failure of adequate over- sight, review and prosecution for non-compliance with the legislation. Indeed, what we have seen over the past four years is that “the slope has in fact proved every bit as slippery as the critics had warned” . . . Euthanasia is not the panacea that proponents promise. Its legalization and subsequent rapid normalization have had serious negative effects on Canadian medicine and on Canadian society as a whole. We urge the WMA and our colleagues around the world to look beyond the simplistic media reports and to monitor developments in Canada carefully and wisely before making any changes in their own country’s legal frame- work for medical practice.

Herx L, Cottle M, Scott J. The “Normalization” of Euthanasia in Canada: the Cautionary Tale Continues. World Medical Journal020. 2020;66(2):28-37.

Which Legal Approaches Help Limit Harms to Patients From Clinicians’ Conscience-Based Refusals?

Rachel Kogan, Katherine L Kraschel, Claudia E Haupt

American Medical Association Journal of Ethics

Abstract
This article canvasses laws protecting clinicians’ conscience and focuses on dilemmas that occur when a clinician refuses to perform a procedure consistent with the standard of care. In particular, the article focuses on patients’ experience with a conscientiously objecting clinician at a secular institution, where patients are least likely to expect conscience-based care restrictions. After reviewing existing laws that protect clinicians’ conscience, the article discusses limited legal remedies available to patients.

Kogan R, Kraschel KL, Haupt CE. Which Legal Approaches Help Limit Harms to Patients From Clinicians’ Conscience-Based Refusals? AMA J Ethics. 2020 Mar;22(3):209-216.

(Correspondence) Organ Donation after Medical Assistance in Dying — Canada’s First Cases

Ian M. Ball, Andrew Healey, Sean Keenan, Fran Priestap, John Basmaji, ,Kimia Honarmand, ,Jeanna Parsons Leigh, ,Sam Shemie, ,Prosanto Chaudhury,,Jeffrey M Singh, Jeffrey Zaltzman,Stephen Beed, Matthew Weiss

New England Journal of Medicine, NEJM — New England Journal of Medicine

Extract
The provision of organ donation after medically assisted euthanasia involves unusual challenges, including first-person direct consent, navigation of a new legislative landscape, and incorporation of the legislated requirements of euthanasia into the donation process. Ethical issues involving the well-being of health care workers and conscientious objection have also been raised.

Medical assistance in dying followed by organ donation is new to North America. It is evolving, and if offered to potential donors it provides them with the opportunity to fulfill their dying wishes. Secondarily, this process may make more organs available to patients on transplant waiting lists. There is substantial room for enhanced education of both the public and health care workers and for the evolution of clinical practice. National level, prospective data will be necessary to assess this evolving area of care.

Ball IM, Healey A, Keenan S, Priestap F, Basmaji J, Honarmand K et al. Organ Donation after Medical Assistance in Dying — Canada’s First Cases. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(6):576-577.

Conscientious objection and moral distress: a relational ethics case study of MAiD in Canada

Mary Kathleen Deutscher Heilman, Tracy J. Trothen

Abstract
Conscientious objection has become a divisive topic in recent bioethics publications. Discussion has tended to frame the issue in terms of the rights of the healthcare professional versus the rights of the patient. However, a rights-based approach neglects the relational nature of conscience, and the impact that violating one’s conscience has on the care one provides. Using medical assistance in dying as a case study, we suggest that what has been lacking in the discussion of conscientious objection thus far is a recognition and prioritising of the relational nature of ethical decision-making in healthcare and the negative consequences of moral distress that occur when healthcare professionals find themselves in situations in which they feel they cannot provide what they consider to be excellent care. We propose that policies that respect the relational conscience could benefit our healthcare institutions by minimising the negative impact of moral distress, improving communication among team members and fostering a culture of ethical awareness. Constructive responses to moral distress including relational cultivation of moral resilience are urged.

Heilman MKD, Trothen TJ. Conscientious objection and moral distress: a relational ethics case study of MAiD in Canada. J Med Ethics. 2020;46(2):123-127. doi:10.1136/medethics-2019-105855

(News) Woman suing two pharmacies after being denied emergency contraception

The US case brings to light concerns around conscientious objection at a time when a federal religious discrimination bill is being debated in Australia

Sheshtyn Paola

Exract
A woman has filed a lawsuit against a Thrifty White Pharmacy and a CVS Pharmacy in Minnesota in the US, alleging the two pharmacies illegally kept her from accessing emergency contraception.

Andrea Anderson, a 39-year-old mother of five, says she asked the pharmacist at her drugstore in Minnesota more than once why he couldn’t fill her prescription for emergency contraception, according to the Star Tribune.

“I then realised what was happening: he was refusing to fill my prescription for emergency contraception because he did not believe in it,” Ms Anderson said on Tuesday.

Paola S. Woman suing two pharmacies after being denied emergency contraception. Australian Pharm J [Internet]. 2019 Dec 12.

The Independence of Judicial Conscience

Barry W. Bussey

Extract
. . . Competence and character are no longer the sole criteria for evaluating a judicial nominee; candidates face a climate which demands they have the “correct” moral opinions on fundamental human rights issues. Those issues include abortion, marriage, and the euphemistically-termed Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD). . . to disregard the judicial conscience is to compromise the dignity of the judge, the worth of her convictions, the fullness of her humanity. Even more, it undermines the very essence of what distinguishes a democratic society characterized by diversity, inclusion, and freedom.

Bussey BW. The Independence of Judicial Conscience. J Christian Legal Thought. 2019; 9(2): 34-37.

Do physicians require consent to withhold CPR that they determine to be nonbeneficial?

James Downar, Eliana Close, Robert Sibbald

Canadian Medical Association Journal, CMAJ — Canadian Medical Association Journal

Extract
Key Points

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice recently determined that, under both Ontario’s health care consent legislation and common law, physicians do not require consent to withhold cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) that they believe to be medically inappropriate.

Physicians in Ontario need to distinguish carefully between a scenario where CPR would be outside the standard of care and should not be offered and a scenario where CPR is within the standard of care but the physician does not feel it is in the patient’s best interests; each scenario demands a different response.

Physicians still have a professional responsibility to communicate (or make reasonable efforts to communicate) honestly and compassionately about the limitations of CPR and the alternatives to aggressive care.

Downar J, Close E, Sibbald R. Do physicians require consent to withhold CPR that they determine to be nonbeneficial? CMAJ 2019 Nov 25; 191 (47) E1289-E1290; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.191196.

Colorado End-of-Life Options Act

A Clash of Organizational and Individual Conscience

Matthew Wynia

Journal of the American Medical Association

Extract
The 2016 Colorado End-of-Life Options Act includes a provision unique among states with such laws, specifically privileging individual health care professionals, including physicians and pharmacists, to choose whether to write and fill prescriptions for life-ending medications, such as high-dose secobarbital or various combinations of morphine, diazepam, beta-blockers, and digoxin, without regard to the position their employer has taken on the law. This provision virtually guaranteed the Colorado law would eventually be challenged, which happened in August 2019.¹ The current legal case directly pits the conscience rights of individual health care professionals against those of religiously affiliated corporations. Because 5 of the top 10 US hospital systems by net revenue are now religiously affiliated,² and these systems often restrict medical care in a variety of ways,³ how the case is resolved could have far-reaching implications for US health care, extending well beyond the relatively rare use of aid-in-dying medications at the end of life.

Wynia M. Colorado End-of-Life Options Act: A Clash of Organizational and Individual Conscience. JAMA. 2019;322(20):1953-1954. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.16438

Colorado End-of-Life Options Act: A Clash of Organizational and Individual Conscience

Matthew Wynia

Extract
If the courts rule that the Constitution allows hospitals to exert control over individual physicians’ claims of professional conscience, it will be a victory for corporate medicine. But if the state law is upheld, the case could establish that physicians’ professional conscience claims hold or take precedence over the ethical and religious directives of religiously affiliated hospitals. It is possible that at least some religiously affiliated health systems might rather close than allow that outcome.

Wynia M. Colorado End-of-Life Options Act: A Clash of Organizational and Individual Conscience. J Am Med Ass. 2019 Oct 29;322(20):1953-1954.

In the Footsteps of Teiresias: Treatment for Gender Dysphoria in Children and the Role of the Courts

Mike O’Connor, Bill Madden

The Family Court of Australia has stepped back from a previously perceived need for involvement in the approval of stage 1 and stage 2 treatments, for children requiring gender transformation. At present those children and their families who are in agreement need not seek authorisation of the Family Court to undertake either Stage 1 (pubarche blockade with gonadotrophin-releasing hormone agonists) or Stage 2 treatment (cross-hormone therapy such as oestrogen for transgender males). Stage 1 treatment to suppress pubarche would nowadays be commenced at Tanner stage 2 which commences as early as 9.96 years in girls and 10.14 years in boys. Suppression of puberty continues until the age of 16 years when cross hormonal treatment commences. This article questions the assertion that suppression of puberty by GnRH analogues either in cases of precocious puberty or gender dysphoria is “safe and reversible” and argues that it warrants ongoing caution, despite the Family Court having broadly accepted that assertion.

O’Connor M, Madden B. In the Footsteps of Teiresias: Treatment for Gender Dysphoria in Children and the Role of the Courts. J Law Med. 2019 Oct;27(1):149-163.