conscience rights

Canada has gone hog wild for euthanasia. But the pro-death tide may — may — be beginning to turn. The province of Alberta just passed a bill that significantly restricts eligibility for euthanasia (medical aid in dying, or MAID), soon to be signed into binding law. The biggest change in Bill 18 ends the eligibility of non-terminally-ill patients to be MAIDed (known as Track 2). Among the provisions of Bill 18 (“Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act”), as summarized by the government: Eligibility in Alberta to individuals 18 and over with capacity to make their own health care decision whose natural death has been determined by a physician or nurse practitioner as being reasonably foreseeable, also known as Read More ›

Freedom of religion is on the ropes in increasingly authoritarian Canada — despite a specific charter guarantee of “freedom of religion and conscience.” Indeed, an Ontario court ruled previously that doctors can be coerced under threat of professional discipline to perform lethal jabs or abortions against their religious beliefs and conscience objections. Why? The court ruled that the unenumerated right of patients to receive any legal procedure paid for by the government superseded the specific charter protection. If doctors don’t want to kill, the court also ruled, they can either provide an “effective referral” — meaning soliciting a doctor known to be willing to kill — or get out of medicine. Now, in British Columbia, the family of a euthanized woman, who Read More ›