Extract Mr. Geekie’s interpretation of this section is most disturbing in that some of the phrases he uses suggest a derogatory attitude to physicians engaged in abortion referral. . . . It seems to me clearly unethical for a physician with moral conflicts of interest to refer a patient who consults him about an abortion to a clergyman. . . .It seems that what appeared to be a step forward in ensuring that patients receive unbiased professional judgement in each individual case has become just the opposite.
Extract The code means that a physician who has a conflict of interest between duty to a patient and personal belief shall refer the patient to someone who is not burdened by this conflict of interest, but the code states that a physician who has a conflict of interest between duty to a patient and personal belief shall refer the patient to someone who will provide the treatment the patient desires.
Extract Salaried physicians equal incompetent doctors? Certainly not! Quality medical care depends on a practitioner’s conscience, not the compensation method. . . One acquires professional ethics and satisfaction in one’s work. These things can also be lost, however. Whether the physician charges a fee for service or whether he is salaried, it is his professional conscience that remains his guide, his religion, his motto. . .
Extract Kordig denies that the dictates of one’s conscience are always either obligatory or morally permissible. With this thesis I have no quarrel. The recognition that a person’s conscience can be mistaken, sometimes dangerously so, is at least as old as Hobbes and has been maintained by philosophers as diverse as Hegel, Royce, and Nowell- Smith. Still, people do appeal to conscience in moral disputes and, as I will attempt to show, do so in a manner that is philosophically justifiable. My goal is not so much to attack what Kordig has said as it is to argue that his discussion is incomplete: some appeals to conscience are bogus but some are not.
Extract Many people believe in conscience that a pregnant woman has supreme rights over what happens in her own body. Others believe in conscience that the right of the unborn child to life is as good as that of any other human being. In some countries, the law, in the name of the former right, discriminates against an obstetrician who, in the name of the latter, refuses to destroy that life. This is a serious contemporary issue which tests the sincerity of governments that profess respect for conscience.
Extract Within months [of legalization] physicians across Canada were beset by requests for therapeutic abortion in numbers they had never faced before. Some hospitals established abortion committees; others “did not. Some committees were liberal in their interpretation of the new law; others were restrictive. Soon facilities at many hospitals became overloaded owing to the increased demand for therapeutic abortion, and the waiting period for elective surgery grew longer. Hospital personnel were suddenly confronted with the prospect of caring for patients undergoing voluntary termination of pregnancy, and for some persons this was a difficult task, but they either accepted it or moved to other areas. . .
Extract The doctor-patient relationship is threatened. Once this association implied only one thing: the doctor above all must protect the patient. . . .
. . . it is not inconceivable that, as Canada moves towards socialized medicine and state control of all health facilities, we, too, may sacrifice the privacy of the doctor- patient relationship that we all once regarded as sacred.
. . . There is much concern regarding the involvement of medical personnel in the use of torture for political purposes. . .
. . . When the Dutch medical community refused to cooperate with the Nazi medical organization, 100 Dutch physicians were sent to concentration camps. Other Dutch physicians did not give in; they took care of the widows and orphans of their colleagues. They did not participate in any Nazi activity; they acted unanimously.
. . . Recently physicians in Portugal studied “the scientific effects” of torture; they examined persons before, during and after torture sessions and evaluated their ability to undergo further torture.
. . .We must therefore each ask what is our duty to our state and what to our profession and to our own sense of moral justice. To what extent might we unwittingly become agents of repression? . . . Physicians in Russia condone beatings; if the prisoner dies the physician complies with government policy and eliminates possible repression by signing the death certificate “cirrhosis of the liver.. or “coronary occlusion.”. . .
Extract [Outline of the findings of the Badgley Committee studying the operation of the abortion law.] A trend seen since 1970 is the reduction in the number of “back street abortions” and the sharp decrease in morbidity and mortality stemming from such procedures. Perhaps the most telling sentence in the 474-page report is this: “The procedure in the Criminal Code for obtaining abortion is in practice illusory for many Canadian women.
Extract . . . papers are continually being published pointing out the hazards in subsequent childbirth after an induced abortion. . . .There is a great deal of woolly thinking about the viability of the fetus. . . One can think of several other situations where humans are totally dependent on others for their continuing existence but are not considered expendable. . . I honestly think we tend to salve our consciences far too carelessly when we use the vague term “nonviability” as a reason for condoning the termination of lives that are far from inanimate.
Extract In the intensive care unit at the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton a fetus weighing 720 g has survived and thrived. By definition, any fetus of that size or larger should be considered potentially viable. . . . . In Alberta in 1975 there were two abortions induced by saline infusion; the fetuses weighed 800 and 1250 g, respectively. These weights were discovered by accident because hospitals allowing abortions prohibit the weighing of aborted fetuses. In fact, one of the fetuses was rushed to an intensive care unit in Edmonton, so it must still have been alive. . . . There is no question that the Criminal Code needs amendment to accomplish two things: (a) to make recording of weights of aborted fetuses mandatory and (b) to make it possible to take criminal action against any doctor who kills a potentially viable fetus by abortion.
