News commentary for 1999, 2000 and 2012 to the present is available on the News/Blog. News/Blog.

COMMENTARY
2011

Conscience Clauses Needed Worldwide for Medical Professionals
. . . Progressives likely cheer erosions of conscience protections for health care providers because emergency contraception, abortion and assisted suicide are issues they champion. But I want to look farther into the future to see how a lack of conscience clauses will affect the medical profession.

Obama Administration Rejects Conscience Protections
An issue of paramount importance for medical professionals is the protection of their right to conscience-their freedom to refuse or decline to do practices they oppose on religious or moral grounds. A February decision by the Obama administration, however, sweeps aside conscience protections instituted under President Bush. . .

Obama Administration Guts Healthcare Conscience Regulation
On February 18 the Obama administration gutted the only federal regulation protecting conscientious healthcare professionals from discrimination. . .

Conscience Protection at Risk
In October, at a central European meeting with pro-life colleagues, I learned that in a few days there was going to be a vote in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe concerning rights of conscience. The vote was on the "McCafferty Report," which strongly recommended significant restrictions on rights of conscience. . .

Protect conscience clause
Should healthcare providers be required to engage in medical procedures, such as abortions, that violate their individual moral or religious convictions? . . .

COMMENTARY
2010

Charleston Baptist letter to Washington Pharmaceutical Board
Denouncing Removal of Right of Conscience Provision

The Conscience of the Chemists
The General Pharmaceutical Council, shortly to take over the regulation of pharmacists, has issued a revised code of conduct that permits pharmacists to refuse the sale of the contraceptive and morning-after pills to customers . . .

Unchecked government health care endangers conscience rights
Cathy DeCarlo of Brooklyn and her family followed the health reform debate more closely than some others might have.  Cathy is Catholic and a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.  Less than a year ago, the federally-funded hospital forced her to assist in a 22-week dismemberment abortion . . .

Disdains Scott Brown's conscience
Reading James Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" last week, I was struck by how timely it is after 225 years. . . Madison's principle - that we should not force people with conscientious objections to cooperate in practices they view as evil - has taken a beating in the current Senate campaign. . .

COMMENTARY
2009

Vellacott weighs in on Abortion
The controversy surrounding the availability of abortion in Saskatoon appears to have begun with a complaint to the effect that Saskatoon physicians are generally unwilling to perform the procedure after 12 weeks gestation. . .

The right not to be pushed around by government
Last year, Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons came close to implementing a policy that would have made it "unethical" for doctors to decline, as a matter of conscience, to perform controversial medical procedures on otherwise healthy patients. . .

Personal conscience strengthens law
. . .legal protections alone are insufficient to motivate an individual to buck an establishment that has gone AWOL ethically. . .

Pharmacists live in fear
. . .It was in Toronto that a colleague suggested I leave my beliefs at the door and in Vancouver that a pharmacy manager warned me about "imposing my morality" . . .

Re: The Next Moral Quagmire: Conscience
Based on my informed moral and religious conscience, I am a doctor who refuses to refer for abortions. I refuse to co-operate with intrinsic wrongness. . .

Pro-choice - unless you're a doctor
One of our most celebrated liberties in America is the freedom of conscience, or the freedom to hold and act upon conscientious judgments. . .

Why is there no choice for pro-lifers?
What is going on in America, the land of the free? It's not pretty; it's not even practical; and it smacks strongly of anti-Catholic bigotry. . .

Wrong to rescind 'conscience rule'
Dr. Leslie Chorun was forced to resign from her residency program because she refused to refer women for abortions, believing it was below the standard of care for physicians. Dr. Sandy Christiansen was reamed out in front of her team of residents and medical students for not wanting to be involved in her patient's late-term abortion because of her Christian beliefs. .  .

Time to provide conscience protections for pharmacists
. . .Thomas Jefferson said that no provision in the Constitution "ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of civil authority." . . .

Conscience clauses provide real choice
Pro-choice. Pro-choice. Pro-choice. We get a little tired of hearing that moniker for the abortion-rights movement, since it isn't very accurate. . .

Protecting Conscience
Last week, what the Washington Post characterized as a "terse posting on a federal Web site" set the stage for a debate on just how seriously our society takes freedom of conscience. . .

Cardinal George Urges Catholics to Tell Administration: Keep Conscience Protections for Health Care Workers
. . .I'd like to take a moment to speak about two principles or ideas that have been basic to life in our country: religious liberty and the freedom of personal conscience.

Regulation keeps abortion a 'choice'
The Blade's Jan. 6 editorial, "Health-care mischief" unwisely attacks a modest new federal agency regulation that would finally implement 35 years of First Amendment and civil rights protections . . .

The campaign against conscience rights
American healthcare workers who oppose abortion and euthanasia could be squeezed out of their jobs. . .

COMMENTARY
2008

A matter of conscience
. . . few Americans realize that abortion-related mandates are also threatening to U.S. health care professionals who follow medical standards such as the Hippocratic Oath. . .

Don't doctors deserve a choice on abortion?
The acerbic editorial "Bush rules" (Nov. 11) ironically accuses the Bush administration of attacking "personal rights" and then lambastes the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for proposing a regulation to protect the civil rights of health care professionals. . .

New-look Inquisitions want to call doctors in for a little chat
This summer, Canada's well-known doctor shortage almost got worse. A portion of doctors in Canada's largest province started scouting for jobs elsewhere, expecting that Ontario would soon require them to violate their conscience. . .

Proposed rule would protect doctors from discrimination
The uproar over a modest proposal by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reveals a widening culture chasm in healthcare, created by disparate views of medical ethics and civil rights. . .

"Human Rights" vs. Basic Freedoms
A timely intervention has prevented the cancer from metastasizing, but aggressive treatment is still needed.  The diagnosis is by now well known: From their privileged place within the body politic, Canada's various human rights commissions have gone from legitimately fighting discrimination to attacking Canadian liberties. . .

Letter to the Editor, Vancouver Sun
Re: "Doctors have a duty of care notwithstanding their religious beliefs"
Your editorial ("Doctors have a duty of care notwithstanding their religious beliefs," Vancouver Sun, 17 September, 2008) refers to a doctor's "duty of care," but that is not what is at issue in Ontario. The draft Ontario College of Physicians policy is not about patients "receiving adequate treatment." It is about "accessing services," as one might access automotive repair . . .

Check your Ethics
While the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) has been in the spotlight for its proposal to restrict doctors' freedom of conscience, the source of the CPSO's attacks on doctors has been revealed to be the Ontario Human Rights Commission. And this bodes badly not just for Ontario doctors, but for the future freedoms of all working Ontarians. . .

Shoving abortion down doctors' throats
Time was, even as abortion became widely available, one's beliefs around the morality of the practice were one's own business.  Today, unconditional support for unfettered access to abortion seems to be the litmus test of an individual's or an institution's moral standing within the community. . .

Rules let care workers practice medical ethics
Laura Berman's Aug. 26 column, "Keep the choice in hands of patients," mischaracterizes a conscience-protecting regulation recently proposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as somehow pitting "health care workers with strong religious and moral beliefs against women needing care." . . .

Re: Sept. 8 editorial "Leavitt should drop proposed health care rule."
. . . The regulation in no way prohibits access to either contraception or abortion. The regulation merely implements 35 years of civil rights laws to protect health care professionals from discrimination . . .

Moral Safeguards for Patients, Too
The misunderstanding expressed in the Aug. 26 letter, "Health Care's Conscientious Objectors," illustrates the need for the conscience-protecting regulation recently proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. . .

Conscience and coercion
. . . An intolerant approach to individual conscience is fomenting a crisis of access in health care, particularly in obstetrics and gynecology, where doctors and medical students are leaving for fear of reprisals or coercion to do abortions. . .

Abortion Article Was Incorrect
Shirley Kirkwood's recent Open Forum wrongly suggests that a regulation proposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is somehow aimed at blocking contraception use ("Abortion Is A Religious Right," Aug. 21). . .

A Handmaid's Tale
The sheer arrogance of human rights commissions will be their downfall: their conviction that they have a superior understanding of rights compared to anyone else and that once they have pronounced how rights shall be interpreted, the rest of us should fall in lockstep with smiles on our faces and cheery tunes on our tongues, content that our intellectual betters have shown us the error of our ways and revealed the path to true enlightenment. . .

Doctors must always have right to follow conscience
Some 2,500 years ago, doctors were both healers and killers. . . .That ended in 400 BC, when a Greek physician named Hippocrates decided that patients deserved better and wrote an oath to affirm the sanctity of life and the doctor's duty to protect it. . . .

Letter to the Editor, National Post 16 August, 2008 (Not published)
. . . The crux of this question is clearly what we mean by a medical treatment someone "requires", and who decides that the person "requires" it. The doctor? The patient? The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario? . . .

Dignity is key, says pro-life doctor
Unfortunately, letter-writer Greg Hart continues to fail to see my point. This is about religious beliefs against science. It is about conscience and the right of physicians not to engage in harmful practices. . . .

Forcing our doctors' hands
One of the best-known aid organizations in the world is Medecins Sans Frontieres -- Doctors Without Borders. It may soon be joined by a similar group operating within Canada's largest province -- Medecins Sans Conscience -- Doctors Without Consciences. . .

Letter to the Editor, Seattle Post Intelligencer
Asserting that his op-ed column will "bring down the wrath of those who see themselves as ordained guardians of our morals," Dan Thomasson proceeds to angrily moralize about pharmacists who withdraw from a prescription request in rare cases when they deem the prescription harmful to patients or deadly to developing babies . . .

Protecting the Consciences of OB/GYN's
A recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Ethics published a series of articles addressing the question, to what extent should the consciences of obstetrician-gynecologists (ob/gyns) be protected? The importance of the question lay in the fact that ob/gyns may receive requests to perform controversial sexual or reproductive procedures. . .

COMMENTARY
2007

Conscience, Plan B: More than a nicety
John Rinke, a doctor opposed to abortion, finds he must make an unpopular argument if he wants to keep his job. This is unfortunate.  The argument is about a proposed state law saying that all hospitals must immediately give any rape victim who asks for it emergency contraception - in practice, the drug called Plan B. The law makes no exceptions for those hospital employees who think this is wrong. . .

Freedom to Choose: Clear-conscience health reform.
If rising costs, declining quality, administrative hassles, and coverage gaps aren't reasons enough to reform American health care, here's one more: conscience concerns. . .

PRO-CON: Can pharmacists refuse to handle prescriptions for moral reasons? YES
Freedom means freedom for everyone. In a free society, customers shouldn't be forbidden by law from purchasing products except in very restricted circumstances.  And in a free society, proprietors and employers shouldn't be forced to sell any particular product. . .

Deadly Prescription for Canadian Doctors
U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower once observed that in free countries, "the agent may never become the master." If human rights and freedoms are to flourish, he said, "government must operate with its powers sharply defined and limited by the governed."  Presumably that would apply to the Canadian Medical Association as well, which, as an agent for Canada's physicians, is now under pressure to remove doctors' freedom of conscience on abortion . . .

Right to Refuse to Participate in Abortions: Comment on the Weldon Amendment 
If some have their way, you will either have to amputate your conscience or get out of healthcare. They see doctors as vending machines for every and all legal health interventions. Put in your money; get your therapy. . . .

Doctors Sued for Refusing Insemination on Conscience Grounds: Comment on Benitez v. North Coast Women's Care Med Grp
. . . If the plaintiff prevails, it will be a severe blow to the rights of all physicians who seek to follow their conscience. . .

Jiminy Cricket Need Not Apply
Around the country, state legislatures are threatening to remove conscience clauses that have allowed religious institutions as well as individuals to be exempt from providing services they find objectionable on religious and moral grounds. Conscientious objection to military service has a long history in the United States and other countries. Lately, the debate has heated up in the medical arena as well . . .

COMMENTARY
2006

Free speech for pharmacists
The editorial, "Pushing back on 'morning-after' access" wrongly casts an unconscionable decision by the Oregon Board of Pharmacy as a valiant attempt to "push back against efforts to restrict access to the 'morning-after pill.'"  . .

Guided By Conscience
. . . Faith and values, and their implications, are factors in emergency rooms, family practices, residency programs, hospital bioethics committees and operating rooms in the Roanoke and New River valleys.

Outlawing Conscience: Why We Need a Conscience Clause
Heather Williams spent five years working as a pharmacist at a Target store in St. Louis. During that time, Target accommodated Williams's desire not to take part in dispensing the morning-after pill-the drug that causes the abortion of an embryonic human being. But then Planned Parenthood threatened to boycott the Target chain over Williams's employment-so Target fired her. . .

Project Letter to the Editor, Hartford Courant
Frances Kissling, who, for political purposes, purports to have some association with the Catholic Church, poses the rhetorical question, "Does Church doctrine trump rape victims' needs?" (Hartford Courant, 19 March, 2006). The title of her column illustrates the old problem of getting the wrong answers by asking the wrong questions. . .

Heavy-handed in Massachusetts
An imperious Massachusetts state pharmacy board dropped a bomb on private enterprise and individuals rights this week, ordering Wal-Mart to stock the controversial "morning-after pill" ("Wal-Mart to sell morning-after pill," Nation/Politics, Tuesday) . . .

CMA in Washington Post on Conscience Rights
. . . CMDA has spoken out concerning the right of conscience as Christian healthcare professionals come under increasing attack from groups trying to force them to violate their beliefs. It is ironic that those who march under the banner of "choice" and "rights" are eager to trample on the civil liberties of others. . .

COMMENTARY
2005

Rights of Conscience - Exactly Whose Conscience Wins?
If you were to listen to the liberal establishment, you would think there was a terrible abuse of human rights happening here in the US  . . .

Rights of Conscience
Have you noticed the progression of demands from groups that society accept morally objectionable practices? Whether it is abortion on demand or the church allowing homosexual marriage, first there is a demand for tolerance. Once a practice is tolerated, the next demand is for acceptance without reservation. . .

Rights of Conscience
Some pharmacists in Illinois may soon have to decide between their job and their conscience. Recently, Governor Rod Blagojevich issued an executive order requiring pharmacists to dispense all legally written prescriptions, including those for the morning-after pill. . .

Protect pro-life druggists
Public policy debates ignited by special interest groups often lend more heat than light to issues. So it is with "Pharmacists vs. the Pill," a battle started by abortion-rights advocates. .

People without Conscience
. . .The Hyde-Weldon Conscience Protection Amendment was approved as part of Congress's final omnibus funding bill. It forbids federal agencies, and state and local governments receiving federal funds, to discriminate against health care providers who choose not to participate in abortions. . .

Letter to the Editor, Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal (Alarcon)
. . . you write that tolerance is a bedrock value of our democracy and that it goes both ways; yet in the next paragraph you contradict yourself by stating that the onus is on the health professional to respect the religious beliefs of the patient, and not the other way around. . .

Letter to the Editor, Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal (Bizecki)
The editorial written in October's issue was an excellent demonstration of the discriminatory harassment to which conscientious objectors are subjected . . .

COMMENTARY
 2004

What about doctors' right to choose?
Should a private health care provider or hospital be forced to perform abortions, even if he, she or it believes abortions are unethical?

Project letter to the editor, Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal
Polly Thompson asserts that religious tolerance is "a bedrock value of our democracy, and it goes both ways," but then claims that "the onus is on the health professional to respect the religious beliefs of the patient, not the other way around," a most peculiar form of tolerant reciprocity. . .

Doctors, Medical Professionals Deserve Conscience Protection on Abortion
The House ofThe House of Representatives recently voted to prohibit government authorities from requiring any health care professional or institution to perform or pay for abortions.  Our Founding Fathers obviously would applaud this protection of individual liberties and conscience. Yet when D.C. officials faced this hot brewing battle a few years ago, they pushed free speech and freedom of religion aside and nearly plunged the capital into a health care crisis . . .

Project Letter to the Editor, National Post (Canada) 22 May, 2004/> Your report about plans to make the morning-after pill available without prescription claimed that pharmacists who refuse to dispense it for reasons of conscience are expected to refer for the drug ("'Abortion pill' rules loosened: Morning-after tablet to be available without a prescription," National Post, 19 May 2004). This is an oversimplification . . .

Project letter to the Editor, Western Standard Magazine (Alberta, Canada) 14 May, 2004
Should doctors be forced to abandon their faith? by Terry O'Neill draws attention to the problem of freedom of conscience in health care. . .

Project Letter to the Editor, Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology (Canada) 5 April, 2004
Rebecca J. Cook and Bernard M. Dickens state, "Physicians who feel entitled to subordinate their patient's desire for well-being to the service of their own personal morality or conscience should not practise clinical medicine" (Emphasis added).  The statement is unsupported by their own legal references, and it has little to recommend it as an ordering principle in the practice of medicine . . .

Project Letter to the Editor, Calgary Herald (Alberta, Canada) 12 February, 2004
While I am pleased to see that Laura Wershler is willing to accommodate freedom of conscience among health care workers, I must correct some misleading statements included in her article ("The morning after: Pro-life agenda misrepresents the emergency contraceptive pill, or ECP",Calgary Herald, 13 February, 2004) . . .

When Rights Collide
A few years ago, a customer asked Co-op pharmacist Maria Bizecki to fill a prescription for an abortion drug. For Bizecki, a Roman
Catholic and active pro-lifer, this was akin to being invited to  become an accessory to murder. She declined.

It was a risky stand against the prevailing view of pharmaceutical professional associations, and employers retailing drugs. Yet,  ultimately it led to a small step forward for Albertans' religious freedom. . .

COMMENTARY
2003

Project Letter to the Editor, Cybercast News Service (USA)
Some opponents of freedom of conscience for Wisconsin pharmacists justify their coercive views with the claim that rural residents may be deprived of certain drugs if the only pharmacist in town has moral objections to dispensing them. (Pharmacist Conscience Bill Pushed in Wisconsin, February 28, 2003). . .

Project Letter to the Editor, The Medical Post (Canada)
I am writing to correct an error in a report published in July in The Medical Post. ("Swiss vote in new law making abortion legal in first trimester". 24 July, 2002, Vol. 28, No. 37). My response has been delayed by the need to consult Swiss authorities and the Swiss Catholic Bishops' Conference. . .

COMMENTARY
2002

Project Letter to the Editor, Daily News (Halifax, N.S.)
This response to your article Bacon, eggs and peace of mind: Pharmacists, Planned Parenthood push for prescription-free morning-after pill (17 November, 2002) has been delayed by the need to consult the Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists.

With respect to the 'morning-after-pill', your article attributed the following quote to Kelly Grover of Planned Parenthood: "Nobody is forcing pharmacists to prescribe this. There is a code of ethics that requires them to refer patients." . . .

Project Letter to the Editor, New Brunswick/Saint John Telegraph Journal
Doctors at the hospital in Moncton have decided to perform only abortions they believe necessary for maternal health, so that scarce health care resources can be dedicated to reducing waiting lists for surgery. Dr. Henry Morgentaler calls this "disgusting". He also accuses his colleagues of unethical conduct because they appear to be imposing their religious or moral views on patients. . .

The Unfree
It's still legal to oppose abortion, isn't it?  You might think that any piece of legislation with the word "non-discrimination" in it is just about automatically headed for easy congressional passage. What politician wants to be on record as being in favor of discrimination?  Well, it's just not so. At least if the issues involved are religion and abortion . . .

A Doctor's Choice. 
Dick Armey was the Majority Leader (Republican)  in the U.S. House of Representatives when the following opinion column was written.  Mr. Armey successfully argued for the passage of the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act (ANDA).     The column first appeared in the Washington Times on 25 September, 2002.

Tough Pill Bill to Swallow
Passage of New York's Equity in Prescription Insurance and Contraceptive Coverage (EPICC) bill forces New York's fully insured health plans to subsidize all FDA-approved contraceptive pills and devices. In addition to violating religious liberty and an individual's right of conscience, this law undermines parents by expanding government control of American children's sexual and reproductive health . . .

Who is "imposing morality" in Barrie? (Project response to CBC Op-Ed piece, April, 2002)
In an editorial broadcast on CBC Radio on 7 March, 2002, Dr. Brian Goldman criticized Dr. Frederick Ross of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Dr. Stephen Dawson of Barrie, Ontario. Dr. Ross had told his patients to stop smoking or find another doctor, while Dr. Dawson had refused to prescribe birth control pills or Viagra to single patients.

Emergency contraception a flawed choice
Tomorrow, the first day of spring, a coalition of American national, state and local organizations will take Walt Disney's Bambi's notion of "being twitter pated" to a new level . . .

No Hospitality: The Unborn and the ACLU
Few, if any, organizations in the world promote abortion as zealously as the American Civil Liberties Union. Now it's training its guns on hospitals . . .

Project Letter to the Editor, New Brunswick/Saint John Telegraph Journal
Dr. Monica Brewer's characterization of physician referral for morally controversial purposes as a "black and white" issue is the result of inadequate reflection.("MD's Morals Restricting Birth Control Access," February 9, 2002) . . .

Project Letter to the Editor, National Post
A doctor caring for patients in four Ontario cities may be driven from the profession, or from the country, because he refuses to practise medicine in accordance with the policies of Planned Parenthood ("MD under fire for denying birth control," National Post, 22 February, 2002). Welcome to the world of single-issue ethics. . .

Project Letter to the Editor, The Barrie Examiner
Continuing attempts to suppress the freedom of conscience of health care workers like Dr. Stephen Dawson ("Doctor's Faith Under Scrutiny," The Barrie Examiner February 21, 2002) give the lie to the claim, oft repeated by Canadian politicians, that protection of conscience legislation is unnecessary . . .

Project Letter to the Editor (BC Medical Journal)
The cover of your January/February 2002 edition highlighting Dr. Roey M. Malleson's article on 'emergency contraception' was unexpected: a brawny, half-naked, Aryan warrior, eyes glinting murderously from under his horned helmet, wielding a copper IUD, crouched to spring and slaughter. . .

Letter to the Editor, Telegraph Journal (New Brunswick, Canada)
The headline on the front page, "MDs' morals restricting birth control access" (Telegraph-Journal, Feb. 9) was eye-catching.

COMMENTARY
2001

Project Letter to the Editor (Globe and Mail)
Michael Valpy quotes Janet Cooper to the effect that 4,600 prescriptions for the 'morning-after-pill' in BC are believed to have prevented 300 pregnancies . . .Doing the math, one finds that only about 6% of these women might have been pregnant . . .

Letter to the Editor (Pharmacy Practice) Re: Ethics and Patient Care, in the June issue of Pharmacy Practice
I fully agree with Frank Archer's premise that " a long time ago pharmacy established itself as a patient-centred profession". . .

Project Letter to the Editor (Pharmacy Practice)
Far from illuminating fundamental ethical issues, Frank Archer's preference for mantras like "recognized pharmacy services" casts a shadow over discussion. (Ethics

Project Letter to the Editor (The Ottawa Citizen)
It is both remarkable and shameful that nurses like "Alice" must use pseudonyms when commenting on freedom of conscience, something that the Canadian Charter of Rights proclaims to be a "fundamental freedom" . . .

Letter to the Editor (MS. Magazine)
I still don't get it.  How can those who stand for the "right of women to make their own decisions" at the same time argue that a doctor, nurse, or pharmacist should be legally coerced into performing an act that violates her most deeply-held beliefs? . . .

Project Letter to the Editor (Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal)
Further to our e-mail exchange of 24 May, 2001, I am writing to thank you for your editorial response to my criticism of Frank Archer's opinion piece in the Journal last year.

Project Letter to the Editor (The Province)
Readers might be confused by Susan Martinuk's quote from the College of Pharmacists about what the future may hold for the profession: "preparation of drugs to assist voluntary or involuntary suicide, cloning, genetic manipulation or even suicide" . . .

Project Letter to the Editor (Post-Crescent)
An article about a bill in the Wisconsin legislature (Megan Mulholland, Conscience bill offers no easy answers, 30 April, 2001) concludes with the observation that it raises tough questions but "no easy answers. . .

Editorial- (Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal)
Back in August, in the thick of our series on emergency contraception, Sean Murphy, administrator of a group called the Protection of Conscience Project, sent us a letter criticizing a column we published by Frank Archer, a member of the BC College of Pharmacists ethics committee . . .

Hold that conscience: Some health laws would force churches to betray their beliefs. 
Here in New York, Cardinal Edward Egan had a little chat with Gov. George Pataki last week about whether Roman Catholic institutions should be forced to provide contraceptive services and the "morning after" pill for their female employees. . .

Project Letter to the Editor (Pharmacy Practice)
Freedom of conscience and religion enjoy privileged status in Canada and are "fundamental" goods guaranteed by the Charter of Rights, but the Charter does not similarly guarantee professional or economic self-interest . . .

Project Letter to the Editor (Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal)
The January editorial ("Compromise") in the Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal is a welcome invitation to reflect more deeply on the serious obligation to accommodate freedom of conscience within the profession . . . 

Project Letter to the Editor (The London Free Press)
Sharon Osvald’s op/ed piece (Can Workplace, Conscience, Co-exist? 16 January, 2001) refers to a difference in belief about conception. The controversy about the ‘morning after pill’ actually begins to swirl around the definition of conception . . .

Can Workplace, Conscience Co-exist?
It's something most people will have to face at least once in their lives.  Whether it is being asked to work in a dangerous environment or operate a vehicle that is not safe, it can be difficult to balance your convictions and responsibilities at work without affecting your job. . .

Project Letter to the Editor (The Star Phoenix) 
The Star Phoenix editorial in favour of pharmacists dispensing the ‘morning after pill’ reflects some confusion about the controversy surrounding the drug . . .

Update Report on Freedom of Conscience in Healthcare Delivery
Richard A. Watson, M.D.  Co-Chairman, New Jersey Physicians' Resource Council; Past President, Catholic Medical Association