I cannot remember this person's name, and it's just as well since I don't want a libel suit on my hands should I yield to temptation and write exactly what I think of him. He is a bigshot in the medical ethics department and has recently come into the foreground with his egregious and ridiculous claim that no doctor in Canada should have the right to refuse to perform a treatment on a patient that runs contrary to his personal ethics. Which is to say that in his educated opinion no doctor should be allowed to object to performing an abortion, give advice and support for birth control or assist in doctor assisted suicide should it happen to conflict with his ethical or religious beliefs.
In other words, if you are a doctor and you disapprove of abortion and a woman approaches you to provide her with one, according to this "ethicist", you still have to provide her with the abortion. Even if you are thoroughly convinced that you are murdering a baby and may suffer from a series of traumatic episodes after, tough luck. Get in there and butcher that fetus. If you are against birth control and she wants an IUD? Suck it up, dude and put on those latex gloves. Put on an extra pair if it'll make you feel better. Assisted suicide? So, you're going to feel like a murderer and will find yourself seeking psychiatric help for years afterward. Give him the injection already, count to ten, and just think what you're doing to help him make it to a better place.
I an glad I am not a doctor. Not because I'm pro-life because I'm kind of both pro-choice and pro-life (I can too!) but because I would never want to be put in that kind of position. Perform an intervention that runs entirely against everything that I hold sacred or risk losing my job? What a horrible position to find oneself in. I actually might have found myself hovering dangerously close to such a dilemma. When they were tabling legislation for doctor assisted suicide they were at first going to include people suffering from mental illness wanting to end their lives because they had lost all hope. Had the legislation been passed in this form it would have been for me a very difficult situation. As you have guessed I am unconditionally against doctor-assisted suicide. It crosses too closely into the territory of homicide and as a Christian and a life-affirming pacifist this flies in the face of all I hold sacred. To think that I was working with a client who wanted to end his life and I would have to passively accept and even encourage their desire to do so, on pain of losing my job. For this, and other reasons, I lobbied fierce and hard against this legislation, as did others. We won, I am glad to say. I am saddened that legislated suicide is still on the books but a small victory is better than none. For those righteous progressive folk who whine and carp about human rights and death with dignity I have four little words for my answer: improved palliative care services.
No one in any position should be expected to perform a service or duty that runs contrary to their conscience, otherwise we would have demoralized and depressed medical care and support staff and this in general would impact on the collective morale and the ability to provide effective and compassionate services. Neither should a doctor or other health care provider be obligated to direct the patient to those who will do the deed, for the simplle reason that the moral conscience of the care provider has to be equally respected. In most cases abortion and assisted suicide are not life and death issues, except of course for the fetus and for the patient wanting to end their life.
No comments:
Post a Comment