The right to life has won

Dominique Lelièvre

Saturday, 15 July 2017 21:58

UPDATE
Saturday, 15 July 2017 21:58

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The decision of a judge of the superior Court to order the transfusion of blood to save a new-born against the wishes of his Jehovah’s witness parents, Thursday, comes as no surprise to the experts in the law and the science of religions.

The doctors at the Centre Mère-enfant de Québec (CHUL) addressed emergency to the superior Court, last Thursday, to get permission to perform a blood transfusion the old girl a few hours that we had to remove an abdominal mass.

Between the right to life and to freedom of religion, the judge Alain Michaud has decided in favor of the first.

If it is difficult to prioritise the rights contained in the canadian Charter of rights and freedoms, lawyer Jean-Pierre Rancourt, is not surprised by this outcome. Other judgments have been rendered in this direction in the past.

“Doctors know “

“We have seen and as we will see, also, increasingly, believes the latter. When we speak of the life of a person, a human being, the doctors know what they are talking about, and this is not because of the religion that one is going to stop a transfusion. “

However, this is not the case where the patient is of age to give informed consent, he says.

“A child of 15 years, for example, could say that he does not want to receive blood transfusion because of his religion, and he would have the right to present his idea. At this time, I do not think that a judge can overturn it “, details there.

Biblical Prescription

If the request of the parents do not practise transfusion at the risk of their child’s life may lead to misunderstanding, professor of religious studies at Cégep de Sainte-Foy, Alain Bouchard, invites us to put things in perspective.

“For them, the normality, this is it. They have a deep conviction that the end of the world is near and when will this event, the righteous will be saved ” and expose it.

However, biblical texts that prohibit the practice, which is to absorb the blood of another animal or another person.

These beliefs weigh heavily on the decision whether or not to accept a transfusion, ” says the professor.

A parent of the Jehovah’s witnesses explains : “If one gives a blood transfusion to my child, I just ordered, he will suffer forever thereafter. “

Mr. Bouchard, however, indicates that this religious movement is not absolutely frozen in time.

“If you look back in the history of Jehovah’s witnesses, there have been times where they have held that given the context, given the reading that one can make of the situation, there has been a softening of, for example compared to the transplants “, says he.