(Discovery Institute) – Freedom of religion is on the ropes in increasingly authoritarian Canada — despite a specific charter guarantee of “freedom of religion and conscience.” Indeed, an Ontario court ruled previously that doctors can be coerced under threat of professional discipline to perform lethal jabs or abortions against their religious beliefs and conscience objections. Why?
The court ruled that the unenumerated right of patients to receive any legal procedure paid for by the government superseded the specific charter protection. If doctors don’t want to kill, the court also ruled, they can either provide an “effective referral” — meaning soliciting a doctor known to be willing to kill — or get out of medicine.
Now, in British Columbia, the family of a euthanized woman, who was forced to leave a Catholic hospital to be killed, is seeking to compel Catholic hospitals to permit euthanasia on their premises — despite it being utterly contrary to Catholic moral teaching in the medical context. CONTINUE