Sask. doctors to decide on how to refuse services based on moral beliefs

Members of Saskatchewan's College of Physicians and Surgeons approved a policy in principle today, on how doctors can refuse services based on religious or moral beliefs.                

It includes refusing to provide birth control, abortion, genetic testing and blood transfusions.

In a meeting today the College selected a draft policy that would allow doctors to refuse services based on their moral or religious beliefs but the physician would have an obligation to provide the patient with information on how to access that service.

"It doesn't prescribe the exact way of doing it. It isn't a list and you have to maintain a list. It's putting the onus back on the physician to say it is your obligation to make sure this is done but you can discuss that with the patient as to how exactly you're going to do that," said Bryan Salte, associate registrar of the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Salte said the College received lots of feedback on the subject.

Larry Worthen, executive director of the CMD's, the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians Societies and Canadian Physicians for Life, said his members are opposed to the policy.

"To ask physicians to act against deeply held moral convictions would be a clear infringement on physicians' rights to the Section 2 fundamental freedoms of conscience and religion guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms," Worthen said.

Salte said the draft policy will be posted on the College's website for further consultation with physicians and the public.

"What is attempted is to try and reconcile the interests as much as is possible. It's simply not going to be possible to have something that's going to satisfy everybody," Salte said.

The College will consider the input and make a final decision in September.