VATICAN – No physician should be forced to choose between violating his or her conscience and facing professional sanctions when defending human life, said the president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations.

The Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada is asking the Ontario Court of Appeal to take a second look at their case against the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

While doctors who lost their right to practise medicine according to their conscience contemplate a legal appeal, a prominent pro-euthanasia organization suspects faith-based hospitals, nursing homes and hospices may be next to face demands to accommodate euthanasia and assisted suicide.

A doctor’s conscience takes a back seat to a patient’s right to have medical procedures such as assisted suicide and abortion, Ontario’s Divisional Court ruled Jan. 31.

OXFORD, England – Catholics in Belgium are concerned the country's euthanasia law is being abused to kill patients without legal checks and safeguards.

OTTAWA – Religious freedom and conscience rights will continue to be top agenda items for Catholic and other faith groups in 2018 as challenges play out in the courts and in the public arena.

Legalized euthanasia in Canada is putting nurses — and their consciences — in tough situations, said University of Alberta nursing professor Christina Lamb. 

During the summer I decided to take a break from speaking about euthanasia. There were several reasons. First, it was getting more and more difficult to find groups that were interested in hearing the anti-euthanasia message. Then when something was arranged only a handful of people would show up.

Medicine in Canada has been undermined by the most permissive assisted dying laws in the world, physician and medical ethicist Sr. Nuala Kenny told about 150 Catholics gathered at the University of Toronto’s Regis College on Oct. 4.

OTTAWA – Euthanasia and assisted suicide deaths in Canada could soon exceed the rates of such deaths in Belgium and the Netherlands, warns the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

All summer long Winnipeg’s St. Boniface Hospital has been in the eye of a storm over its right as a religious health care institution to refuse to provide euthanasia and assisted suicide.

OXFORD, England – Belgium's Brothers of Charity Group, which runs 15 centers for psychiatric patients, has rejected a Vatican order to stop offering euthanasia.

The fight against assisted suicide has not been lost, says a Canadianborn liberal and atheist English academic who opposes medicalized killing.

The tragic case of a 77-year-old woman, known only as AB, who had been wracked with intolerable pain for more than three decades, was resolved in August through doctor-induced death.

Or was it?

Mental health patients should not be eligible for assisted suicide, says the Canadian Mental Health Association.