Ontario court rules “pro-life” doctors can’t leave patients out in the cold

It’s one thing to refuse to do something that violates your beliefs. It’s another if you refuse to do the job you signed up for and help someone in desperate need, especially when all that’s asked of you is that you direct vulnerable people to someone else who can help them where you won’t. And for some Ontario doctors, it took a court to set them straight.

An Ontario court says doctors who have a moral or religious objection to treatments such as assisted dying, contraception or abortions have to refer patients to another doctor who can provide the service.

A group of five doctors and three professional organizations had launched a legal challenge against a policy issued by the province's medical regulator, arguing it infringed on their right to freedom of religion and conscience under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The group — which includes the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians' Societies and Canadian Physicians for Life — said the requirement for a referral amounted to being forced to take part in the treatment.

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The court said the benefits to the public outweigh the cost to doctors.

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"The requirements impair the individual applicants' right of religious freedom as little as reasonably possible in order to achieve the goal. The alternatives proposed by the applicants would compromise the goal of ensuring access to health care in many situations, often involving vulnerable members of our society at the time of requesting medical services."

Keep in mind what these treatments do. Assisted dying? Canadian law reserves that for terminally ill patients who want to end their suffering. Contraception prevents STDs from spreading like wildfire and keeps unwanted pregnancies from upending people’s lives. And abortion? Setting aside the issue of women’s bodily autonomy, it’s also a life-saver for women whose pregnancies pose serious health risks, it spares rape survivors from having to carry and birth their aggressor’s offspring, and it prevents infants with severe abnormalities from dying at birth or suffering beyond, amongst other reasons too numerous and self-evident to list.

These are the people those doctors refuse to help, at least in any way that would actually alleviate their problems. And not only are they already exempt from helping their patients, they want to reserve the right not to send those patients to someone else who will help them. It’s so unprofessional, unethical and dangerously irresponsible that it should be a career-ending move for any physician caught doing it.

Now that a court had to step in and force them to do their jobs, expect them to start whining about how persecuted they are in not being allowed to leave the people who put their trust in them out in the cold. Because evidently, “pro-life” means keeping people alive at all costs, regardless of their wishes or whether they’re suffering. It’s what baby Jesus wants.