A group of Christian physicians sued the state of California on Tuesday, claiming that last year’s revisions to the state’s 2015 assisted suicide law will force medical personnel to violate their conscience and participate in procedures they oppose on religious grounds.
The new regulations, codified in California Senate Bill 380, now require physicians who have objections to assisted suicide to “document” a patient’s request before referring that patient to another physician.
The objecting physician would have to educate the patient about aid-in-dying medication and procedures and transfer the patient’s files to another doctor who would provide the treatment.
In addition, S.B. 380 shortens the period between the legally required two separate notifications by a patient that they wish to undergo the procedure from 15 days to 48 hours. Documentation of the request — even if made to a physician who has religious or ethical objections to the practice — would constitute one of those required notifications, making the objecting physician effectively a participant in the end-of-life procedure, the lawsuit claims.
Compelling these actions, attorneys representing the Christian Medical and Dental Associations claimed, effectively “mandates that physicians engage in statutorily required steps to advance the patient toward assisted suicide,” according to the suit filed in federal court.
The new bill compels all California physicians “to provide patients with information about assisted suicide and to refer patients for assisted suicide against their religious, ethical, and medical objections to doing so, and leaves them open to criminal, civil, administrative, and professional liability if they do not comply,” the complaint stated.
The above comes from a Feb. 22 story in the Washington Times.
Flawed argument. Remote material cooperation with evil is justifiable under Catholic moral principles. This is similar to a Catholic physician filling out a prescription for birth control pills for a patient who requests them.
Doctors who complete the first documentation in a request for assisted suicide are not moral participants in any eventual evil act of suicide. Nor are doctors who complete a prescription for birth control at a patient’s request moral participants in any eventual evil act of using them.
First two sentences? Fine. Everything else? Oh my goodness.
Writing a prescription for contraception is not remote material cooperation.
https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/answers/moral-cooperation-in-the-evil-of-another-23211
Kevin T.– Our Nation, since the 1960s, has rejected Christianity and Christian standards of living, in almost every profession, favoring “me-me-me.” That’s exactly what people like Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden do. No doctor in this world should ever be compelled to provide birth control pills nor have anything to do with assisted suicide.
My comment of Feb. 26 at 3:01pm, was edited. Anyway– my family has always gone to only doctors who believe in and practice their profession by good Christian values, and the time-honored Oath of Hippocrates. Most good doctors in today’s Me-Generation era, that we have found, have been either devout, dedicated Catholics, or evangelical Protestants.
Kevin T: “Remote material cooperation with evil is justifiable under Catholic moral principles.”
More accurate would be, “Remote material cooperation with evil is justifiable — under certain circumstances — using Catholic moral principle.” (By itself, remote material cooperation is not enough to get you off the hook.)
Yes. But he word justifiable is not right.
Permissible is usually the word that they use.
Formal cooperation in evil is always wrong. It occurs when someone intentionally helps another person carry out a sinful act. For example, a doctor who prescribes contraceptives intends that his patient use them, and thus cooperates formally in the patient’s acts.
National Catholic Register
Kevin, a Catholic doctor gave me samples of the birth control pill for what he said were medical reasons. The pills were outdated, He told me to come back, and he would give me a prescription. I felt uncomfortable about it and decided to talk with my elderly parish priest. It was he who told me not to take the Pill, that there were natural ways of spacing children. On the way to a shopping mall, I stopped by a Catholic shrine for mass. It was there that the female doctor, who later helped save my life, was telling about Natural Family Planning after mass.
I was wearing the Miraculous Medal all that time.
“Insidious way to compel assisted suicide”
OR
is it Insidious way to assist compelled suicide?
Birth control, abortion, and assisted suicide, are all mortal sins. A good doctor has absolutely nothing to do with Satan and sin.
After my Catholic doctor retired, about 25 years ago, I searched for a new family doctor, with Catholic medical beliefs and standards. My first two questions that I would always ask, when searching for a new doctor, were– “Do you believe in or prescribe any form of birth control? And “Do you believe in, perform, or refer patients for abortions?” A devout, dedicated, practicing Catholic or Evangelical Christian doctor, would always have deep convictions on these issues. I chose a very good devout, Evangelical Christian, Chinese doctor, with traditional family values.
When I was around four or five years old, our family doctor retired, and turned his medical practice over to a fine, young Chinese doctor. In those days, so long ago, medical practice was much simpler, doctors made housecalls, upheld the Hippocratic Oath and high Christian standards of medical practice– and you didn’t need medical insurance– and doctors didn’t need malpractice insurance. Life was much simpler. Christian values were upheld by our whole society. No one ever talked of any personal views on abortion– it was illegal, and a no-no– not a subject to discuss. There was no such thing as birth control pills, either– and that subject was a no-no. There were always immoral people, in every era– but even criminals would never dare lie, and call evil “good,” and good “evil,” like many do, today.
Today, Monday Feb. 28th, the Senate will vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that if passed, will codify Roe vs. Wade, making abortion-on-demand-up-to-birth legal, nationally. All previous pro-life laws passed in every state, will be nullified, if this bill passes. It will be a terrible tragedy for all unborn children, whose mothers seek abortions.
Well, thanks be to God– this evil bill did not pass, today, in the Senate.