June 9, 2015 (National Review) — Doctors are increasingly under threat of being forced to kill or get out of medicine.
I call this “medical martyrdom,” that is, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc. forced to choose between engaging (or being complicit) in life-terminating acts such as euthanasia or abortion and losing their careers.
It is naked authoritarianism that forces doctors to violate the Hippocratic Oath.
That’s the law of Quebec already, and will almost surely be soon throughout Canada.
The Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) published an ethics opinion in the same regard and Victoria, Australia has such a law around abortion.
Now Colombia, where euthanasia was imposed throughout the nation by the Supreme Court. From the Pan Am Post story:
A new ruling by Colombia’s Constitutional Court means that public health institutions, and all the doctors who work in them, will be unable to refuse a patient’s request for assisted suicide — forcing them to carry out the procedure, or transfer the patient to an institution that will.
Here in the USA, assisted suicide laws and proposals protect medical (but not pharmacist) conscience. But that’s only to get the laws passed.
Should the USA widely legalize assisted suicide, the current comity will be euthanized, and then medical martyrdom will commence.
Reprinted with permission from the National Review.