Doctors are increasingly under threat of being forced to kill or get out of medicine. I call this “medical martyrdom” — that is, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc. are forced to choose between engaging (or being complicit) in life-terminating acts such as euthanasia or abortion and losing their careers.

It is naked authoritarianism that forces doctors to violate the Hippocratic Oath. It’s the law in Quebec already, and soon will almost surely be so throughout Canada.

The Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) published an ethics opinion in the same regard and Victoria, Australia, has such a law for abortion.

Now there is Colombia, where euthanasia was imposed throughout the nation by the country’s highest court. From the story in the Pan Am Post:

A new ruling by Colombia’s Constitutional Court means that public health institutions, and all the doctors who work in them, will be unable to refuse a patient’s request for assisted suicide — forcing them to carry out the procedure, or transfer the patient to an institution that will.

Here in the United States, assisted suicide laws and proposals protect medical (but not pharmacist) conscience. But that’s only to get the laws passed. Should the U.S. widely legalize assisted suicide, the current comity will be euthanized, and then medical martyrdom will commence.

Image: Palace of Justice, Bogota, Colombia, via Wikipedia.

Cross-posted at Human Exceptionalism.