Canada’s medical totalitarians
by Sean Murphy
An Ontario College of Physicians official, Dr Marc Gabel, says that physicians unwilling to provide or facilitate abortion for reasons of conscience should not be family physicians. The working group Dr Gabel chairs wants the College to approve this policy. If it does, ethical cleansing of Ontario’s medical profession will begin this year, ridding it of practitioners unwilling to do what they believe to be wrong. Dr Gabel claims that this is required by professional practice and human rights legislation.
It is not clear that the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) will agree. After all, it requires some effort to maintain that physicians are ethically or morally obligated to do what they believe to be unethical or immoral. Moreover, last August, the OMA’s General and Family Practice Section warned Dr Gabel’s working group that the quality of medical care would suffer if only students willing to sacrifice their personal integrity were accepted in medical school. Moreover, “What about remote areas of practice?” the Section asked. “Will more prescriptive policies drive physicians to feel that they will have no choice but to practice in more urban settings?”
In other words, is it really better that a pregnant woman in Gravel Roads Only should have no local obstetrical care rather than the help of a rural physician unwilling to recommend or refer for abortion?
The concern expressed by the OMA is understandable, but actually beside the point. In truth, concern about access to services is not really what is behind the drive for ethical cleansing. That was made abundantly clear in Ottawa last year, after it was learned that an Ottawa physician was refusing to prescribe or refer for contraceptives. The story hit the front page of the Ottawa Citizen.
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