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The doctor would likely remind the patient that he is free to seek a second opinion, or even seek out another doctor altogether. But the patient’s wish does not override her professional opinion; the doctor is not a waiter taking an order.

A doctor can refuse to prescribe the latest weight-loss drug, but must “effect” a lethal injection

What if the patient instead asks to be killed? Then, according to the CPSO, the doctor becomes a service provider, not a professional with a different judgment, much less a citizen with conscientious objections. A doctor can refuse to prescribe the latest weight-loss drug, but must “effect” a lethal injection.

The court, in a unanimous decision, found that the CPSO policy violates doctors’ charter right to religious freedom. (It did not rule on freedom of conscience, but presumably the same would apply.) It further found that the infringement was neither “trivial” or “insubstantial.”

So the court found a serious infringement of a fundamental freedom guaranteed by the charter, and yet upheld the “effective referral” policy, finding that it was a “reasonable limit on religious freedom, demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

What happens when society is no longer keen on certain freedoms or certain democratic rights?

Reasonable to whom? Not to the physician who finds abortion abhorrent, and now must to some degree facilitate it. Not to the doctor who wants her infirm patients to know that she would never hasten their deaths, but now is required to co-operate in just that.

The charter permits infringements on rights that are “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” But what happens when society is no longer keen on certain freedoms or certain democratic rights? Or at least when the judges hearing the case think fundamental freedoms not quite so fundamental after all?