EDMONTON, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) – The medical regulatory college in charge of doctors and nurses in Alberta drafted plans that aim to mandate all healthcare workers in the province, including physicians and their assistants, many of whom are pro-life, be in effect forced to be complicit in abortions or assisted suicides.
As noted in a recent blog by Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) director of communications Pete Baklinski, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (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 Medical Assistance in Dying (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’s “effective referral” proposals have 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.
“Alberta already has a solid framework for patients to access services they are looking for without mandating that doctors violate their professional judgment,” she added.
Additionally, the Alberta Committee for Conscience Protection (ACCP), a group that represents physicians in the province, 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.
UCP members also passed a resolution calling for the party to stop the expansion of legal euthanasia.
Other votes in favor of medical freedom included UCP party members voting to “Protect an individual’s right to free expression” and as well as “Protect a medical practitioner’s right to research, speak, and write; and protect Medical Doctors and all healthcare professionals from having their licenses to practice threatened for publicly expressing professional medical opinions in any public setting.”
Resolution 16, which calls for the party to “enshrine the doctor-patient relationship” by “protecting Alberta physicians from undue third-party interference,” was also passed by members.
Any Albertan, in addition to medical professionals, can respond to the new CPSA’s “effective referral” proposals by commenting on them. The CPSA is allowing feedback via a form on its website, which can be found here, until January 15. Comments are open for all to see.
CPSA proposal is ‘simply outrageous and must be stopped’
As noted by Baklinski, if the CPSA’s new standards are implemented, then “doctors who practice medicine according to the Hippocratic oath of doing ‘no harm’ to those in their care and who, as a consequence, conscientiously object to any practice or procedure that causes the death of their patient,” will be “forced to violate their conscience or face disciplinary actions and even give up their practice.”
Baklinski observed that forcing a “doctor to make an ‘effective referral plan’” is “forcing them to participate in the evil.”
“It is, in essence, to hand over the patient to someone else who will be the patient’s hitman or assassin,” he noted.
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” mandated, as the CPSA is looking to do, would in effect force medical professionals to go along with the plan against their will.
Baklinski also noted that the change, if implemented, could make it so that doctors would be forced to violate their consciences by “having to provide an effective referral for sexually confused patients who request puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, sex change mutilation surgery or transgenderism-affirming psychiatric counselling.”
Baklinski wrote that the “future of Alberta’s healthcare system hangs in the balance with this proposal.”
“The two doctors’ groups are not underestimating the situation. If doctors of conscience who practice the Hippocratic oath are forced to flee Alberta’s medical scene if this proposal passes, then all the province will be left with are doctors who have no problem with killing their patients,” he said.
“The healthcare system must not be left to the killers.”
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]