O’Toole: MDs must refer patients for services they reject
WINNIPEG — Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole says he believes doctors must refer patients seeking services such as abortion or medical assistance in dying to another provider if they object to performing these procedures themselves.
O’Toole faced questions Friday about his position on conscience rights for health professionals after a promise to uphold them appeared in his party’s election platform.
“They will have to refer, because the rights to access those services exist across the country,” he told reporters at a campaign stop in Winnipeg. “We have to respect conscience rights but allow there to be referrals.”
The stance marks a shift from O’Toole’s leadership run last year, when he vowed to protect the conscience rights of health professionals whose beliefs prevent them from performing a service or offering patients a referral.
Social conservatives have advocated that doctors and nurses with moral or religious objections to a procedure shouldn’t have to refer patients for these services, including abortion, assistance in dying or gender reassignment surgery.
O’Toole courted the party’s social conservative base in the leadership contest in a move many believe contributed to his win over rival Peter MacKay.
On the campaign trail this week, O’Toole didn’t directly answer whether he thought conscience rights extended to referrals, but said Friday he believes that is something doctors must do as he sought to blunt a potential wedge issue.
O’Toole accused Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau of trying to divide Canadians because of his attack on Conservatives over the issue.
“It’s important for me to state that I’m pro-choice and I have a record very clear as an ally for the LGBTQ community. Because out of the gate in this pandemic election that no one other than Justin Trudeau wanted, every day he’s been trying to divide people, whether it’s on the pandemic itself or whether it’s on misleading people with respect to my record,” he said.
The Tory leader also rejected suggestions he reversed his stance on the matter since winning the leadership. “My position has never changed.”
Unveiled in spring 2020, O’Toole’s leadership platform pledged to defend “the conscience rights of all health care professionals whose beliefs, religious or otherwise, prevent them from carrying out or referring patients for services that violate their conscience.”
Social conservative groups chafed at what they believe to be an encroachment on freedom of conscience.
“O’Toole is wrong and must walk this back,” Jack Fonseca, a spokesman for anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition, said in an email.
“Medical practitioners should not lose their constitutional rights just because of their profession,” he said, calling the switch “catastrophic.”
RightNow, a group that opposes abortion, said socially conservative voters expected O’Toole “to stick with his promise of respecting conscience rights for health-care professionals,” including the referral opt-out.