Digital Snitches
No people can long be free that doesn't want to be free or cares little for its own freedom.
No people can long be free that doesn't want to be free or cares little for its own freedom.
"I do not know any country where, in general, less independence of mind and genuine freedom of discussion reign than in America." ∼ Tocqueville, Democracy in America
In the wake of the Supreme Court's marriage decision, these sober thoughts occur:
My job tonight is to give an overview of religious liberty issues: the problems we currently have, and the ones we'll face in the years ahead.
The practice of medicine is an inescapably moral enterprise precisely because physicians are always seeking to do some kind of good and avoid some kind of evil for their patients.
The Court has rejected that view that, "if one's moral view manifests from a religiously grounded faith, it is not to be heard in the public square, but if it does not, then it is publicly acceptable."
Increasingly medical policies now being adopted are incoherent because they purport to include a duty to do what one believes to be wrong in a code of ethics or ethical guidelines, the very purpose of which is to encourage physicians to act ethically and avoid wrongdoing.
The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons is consulting on whether patients' right of access to certain procedures, such as abortion, should trump the rights of those physicians who refuse, for reasons of conscience, to provide them.
An Ontario College of Physicians official, Dr Marc Gabel, says that physicians unwilling to provide or facilitate abortion for reasons of conscience should not be family physicians.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission made a serious error in 2008 when it attempted to suppress freedom of conscience and religion in the medical profession on the grounds that physicians are "providers of secular public services."