Postscript for the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada: Morgentaler vs. Professors Cook and Dickens
12 Pages Posted: 29 Mar 2012
Date Written: November 25, 2005
Abstract
An article about the morning after pill by law professors RJ Cook and BM Dickens in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada elicited a protest from Dr. Howard Bright of Chilliwack, B.C. Dr. Bright contested their statement that physicians are obliged to refer for treatments to which they are morally opposed. “There is no obligation to refer,” he wrote, citing the Code of Ethics of the Canadian Medical Association.
Nonetheless, Cook and Dickens stuck to their claim. “Physicians who feel entitled to subordinate their patient’s desire for well-being to the service of their own personal morality or conscience,” they stated, “should not practise clinical medicine”
The assertion that a patient’s desire should be an ordering principle in the practice of medicine has little to recommend it. More important, the arguments of Professors Cook and Dickens for mandatory referral are unsupported and even contradicted by their own legal and ethical references.
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