CPL president responds to CMAJ's guest editorial, "Abortion: Ensuring Access"

In the guest editorial which appeared in the July 4, 2006 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, Sanda Rodgers and Jocelyn Downie erroneously claim that the Supreme Court's 1988 Morgentaler decision recognized a constitutional right to abortion. The authors are also mistaken when they claim that physicians who fail to provide abortion referrals "are committing malpractice and risk lawsuits and disciplinary proceedings"

Dr. Will Johnston, president of Canadian Physicians for Life, responded to the editor of CMAJ with the following letter on July 11, 2006:

Abortion access editorial worrisome

It is disturbing that Rodgers and Downie have teaching contact with medical students on the topic of access to abortion. It seems clear to me that two of their central points are plainly false.

First, the 1988 Morgentaler decision flunked the existing system because it was capricious, not because the judges discovered a constitutional right to abortion in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In fact, the judges said clearly that Parliament could create a new law protecting the unborn child.

Second, the CMA policy on referral for abortion is unequivocal: a physician must make his or her position, and the right to consult another physician, clear to the patient but is in no way obliged to provide a referral for any procedure. Outside a life-threatening situation, the issue of delay is a red herring: the time it takes for the patient to see a second physician is not within the control of the physician whose judgment leads him or her to decline to participate. I assume that these editorialists are lawyers. They may be passionate partisans of abortion, but their agenda needs to be questioned.

Sincerely,
Will Johnston, MD
President
Canadian Physicians for Life

Conflict of Interest:
None declared

Full text of CMAJ editorial, “Abortion: Ensuring Access”

See more letters in response to “Abortion: Ensuring Access"