EDMONTON, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) — Pro-life healthcare workers in Alberta have said they will not be complicit “to murder” and go along with a plan by their provincial medical regulatory college that aims to mandate all healthcare workers in the province, including physicians and their assistants, to be in effect forced to be complicit in abortions or assisted suicides.
“Many physicians are ethically opposed to newer aspects of medicine, such as MAiD (euthanasia), as well as more established controversial medical services, such as abortion,” Alberta physician Shauna Burkholder said in a public feedback response to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA) proposal to update its official Standards of Practice with new wording that would target pro-life doctors and nurses.
Burkholder noted that should the CPSA’s new “effective referral” plan as it is called be implemented, she would be “forced to participate, even at arm’s length, to a procedure I am morally opposed to, something I view akin to murder, I will be unable to continue practicing medicine in this province.”
“Many excellent physicians like myself will find themselves in similar positions. I hope that CPSA will carefully consider the inclusion of “effective referral” in this document.
As reported by LifeSiteNews on Friday, the CPSA has proposed to update its official Standards of Practice with new wording that would target pro-life doctors and nurses. If the new standards are fully implemented, doctors and nurses would be forced to participate in MAiD and abortion.
According to the CPSA’s proposed update to its new standards, doctors must “proactively maintain an effective referral plan for the frequently requested services they are unwilling to provide,” which would include abortion or MAiD. Additionally, the proposed update also states that doctors “must not … expose patients to adverse clinical outcomes due to a delayed effective referral.”
The CPSA is allowing public feedback on its wording proposal. Albertans have until January 15 to respond to provincial college medical regulator survey to give feedback on changes that could mandate doctors be complicit in abortions or euthanasia. Thus far, many of the responses have been critical of the proposed “effective referral” wording.
Some nurses have said the proposal would make it so practitioners would be forced to violate their “conscience.”
“Healthcare professionals should NEVER have to violate their conscience in providing care to their patients,” wrote Cathy Perri, a registered nurse, in response to the CPSA proposal.
“Trust in nurses and doctors is declining,” she noted, adding, “Many patients, me included, want providers whose values fit with theirs, and a large group of patients want to be served by providers who decline to offer certain procedures like MAID.”
“Finding the right physician fit requires a diverse medical system with a variety of different providers with different opinions,” she added.
Perri mentioned how she feels “privileged to care for dying patients,” as they give her “more than I can ever give them.”
“I did not become a nurse to kill my patients but to journey with them to their natural end & I know many physicians feel the same way.”
Doctors demand respect for the Hippocratic oath
The Hippocratic oath pledge states that doctors “will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and, similarly, I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.”
Making an “effective referral” mandate, as the CPSA is looking to do, would force medical professionals to go along with the plan against their will.
Alberta physician Christin Hilbert asked the “effective referral” be “removed from the Standard,” as the “whole point of conscientious objection is to not be involved in a referral, which means you are agreeing with the procedure, just referring to those with the technical skill to execute it.”
“For example, as Canada does not condone capital punishment, if we extradite someone to a country where we know they will be executed for that crime, have we washed our hands of the capital punishment? Or have we just referred to a country that will do that since we don’t?” he said in response to the CPSA proposal.
“Similarly, objecting practitioners don’t want to be involved in the referral process to be part of a link that will end in that patient’s MAiD death. Alberta has done a great job of balancing on the tightrope of patient and physician rights by establishing a self-referral service.”
Hilbert added that he feels “kind of cheated in that when MAiD first was legalized (physician-assisted suicide having been considered unthinkable for centuries if not millenia before), we were promised that we wouldn’t have to participate against our consciences, and that it would ONLY be used in cases where death was imminent.”
He warned that society is going down a slippery “slope” with MAiD being soon expanded to those with mental illness, as reported by LifeSiteNews.
“As society slides down the slope, please give those who didn’t want to hop on in the first place the right to stay off,” he noted, adding, that there should be respect for the not “violating boundaries and all the other Hippocratic professional behaviours expected of ethical practitioners.”
The CPSA’s “effective referral” proposals have also been blasted by pro-life doctor groups.
The Canadian Physicians for Life (CPL) in a recent email to its supporters took issue with the CPSA’s “effective referral” proposals, saying, “We encourage you to write to the CPSA Council indicating that you oppose the compulsion of ‘effective referral’ in this policy,” CPL executive director Nicole Scheidl said.
The Alberta Committee for Conscience Protection (ACCP), a group that represents physicians in the province, also blasted the proposal.
“We are hoping that we can send a clear message to the CPSA Council that the introduction of the term ‘effective referral’ that was added to the draft policy is not acceptable to many physicians and concerned members of the public,” the ACCP stated in a communication to its members.
As it stands in Alberta, doctors and nurses are not mandated to participate in or be complicit in abortions or euthanasia.
The United Conservative Party (UCP) government under Premier Danielle Smith has promised to protect doctors’ conscience rights, but it remains to be seen what it will do should the latest CPSA proposal become official.
At its AGM in November 2023, the UCP passed a slew of pro-family, medical freedom, and anti-woke policies, including one calling for a bill to support “comprehensive parental rights” in education, and another calling for the party to “enshrine the doctor-patient relationship” by “protecting Alberta physicians from undue third-party interference,” was also passed by members.
CONTACT:
Alberta Minister of Health Adriana LaGrange
Members of Executive Council
Executive Branch
423 Legislature Building
10800 – 97 Avenue
Edmonton, AB
T5K 2B6
Phone: 780 427-3665
E-mail: [email protected]
Premier of Alberta Danielle Smith
Members of Executive Council
Executive Branch
307 Legislature Building
10800 – 97 Avenue
Edmonton, AB
T5K 2B6
Phone: 780 427-2251
E-mail: [email protected]