We are extremely disappointed that the Alberta legislative committee that recommended that legislation proposed by MLA Dan Williams to statutorily protect the conscience rights of health care professionals not proceed for the full legislature to consider. It was an act of cowardice for the majority, including Williams’ United Conservative Party colleagues, to effectively kill the debate on this topic. Conscience rights are mentioned as the first rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and are included among the rights enumerated by the United Nations in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights. How Williams’ bill could be considered controversial is utterly baffling.
There was a sustained campaign against Bill 207 in the name of protecting abortion, euthanasia, and LGBTQ+ rights. The scaremongering suggested that doctors would refuse to serve patients who identify as lesbian, gay or transgender, that women would be denied access to abortion, and that vulnerable patients would be left to suffer. Never mind, as Williams said, his bill was about protecting the rights of healthcare workers, not access to services provided in Alberta.
As upsetting as it is that the rights of healthcare professionals can be ignored, there is a much more troubling lesson from this sad affair: that individuals whose own moral views are at odds with the law are not permitted to live according their own conscience. That is, once the state permits something to happen, it takes that activity’s side and deems it morally objectionable to dissent from that position. Abortion, euthanasia, and the LGBTQ+ agenda are not neutral stances of the state in a live-and-live world (as libertarians claim), but rather worldviews that demand that every person agree to or become complicit in those activities. Without conscience rights we are slaves to the state.
