Cardinal speaks up for pro-life medics

A coalition of groups representing Christian doctors, nurses, pharmacists and ethicists are campaigning for a conscience clause to protect them from involvement in helping patients to die, writes Peter Kavanagh.

Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto, representing  the Coalition for HealthCARE and Conscience, told a parliamentary committee hearing it is essential the Government ensures “effective conscience protection” from planned assisted-dying legislation. The hearing was a response to a 2015 Supreme Court ruling that Canadians have a right to “medical assistance in determining their own deaths” in certain cases. The Government has until August to draft regulations and laws enabling Canadians to access assisted dying.

The cardinal argued that without conscience protection there would be “a grievous effect both upon the integrity of a medical profession committed to do no harm, and upon the trust of patients in those from whom they seek healing”. He added recognising conscience had to include a right to refuse to refer a patient to a doctor who would assist.