Should doctors have the right to refuse to prescribe birth control because of their religious beliefs?
Joan Chand'oiseau was outraged to learn that the physician at her Calgary walk-in clinic refused to prescribe birth control because of her religious beliefs. We check in with Chand'oiseau, debate whether doctors should have the right to refuse to treat a patient on religious or moral grounds.
Last week Joan Chand'oiseau was outraged to learn that the physician at her Calgary walk-in clinic refused to prescribe birth control because of her religious beliefs. Chand'oiseau's story broke just after Canada's largest medical regulator — the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario — announced it would be revisiting its policies on physicians and the Human Rights Code.
We check in with Joan Chand'oiseau, and invite Margaret Somerville, Director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, and Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, to debate whether doctors should have the right to refuse to treat a patient on religious or moral grounds.
