Instead, let's invest in living with dignity

I submitted a second ATIP to Health Canada for Dying with Dignity, to continue where the first one left off:

"Agendas, meeting notes, briefing materials, and calendar entries related to meetings between Canadian not-for-profit "Dying with Dignity Canada" [DWDC] and Health Canada officials between March 2020 and the present day."

I received the following information in an undated memo to the Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Carolyn Bennett regarding a meeting with DWDC:

1) We learn that Dying with Dignity also met previously in December, with the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, Carla Qualtrough. This means that DWDC had at least two meetings with two different Ministers about euthanasia.

2) DWDC has a Letter writing campaign. On DWDC's website they encourage people to write to their MP to move:

"swiftly with the legalization of advance requests, so that those who wish to can make a request for MAID while they still have the capacity and autonomy to do so. We can’t lose momentum now." [good grief get a move on, we need to kill more Canadians.]

3) DWDC wants further expansion of advance requests for MAID.

4) DWDC wants to do better data collecting to determine whether there are any "inequalities or disadvantages based on race, Indigenous identity and disability". In other words, are we killing enough people based on race, Indigenous identity and disability?

5) DWDC wants to develop training for practitioners to be responsive to the needs of underserved and marginalized communities. So do they also want to kill more people from these communities? 

6) Next we have something called POINTS TO REGISTER. I'm not sure, but I think this is talking points for the Minister when she meets with DWDC. This is jaw dropping:

"I appreciate all the work you do to educate the public on end-of-life issues and support patients who are exploring MAID as an option. Than you for the thoughtful advice you have provided the government during the legislative consultations, committee reviews of the former BIll C-7 and the regulatory consultations, based on your experiences working with practitioners, patients and their families."

The Minister is thanking DWDC for their input in advocating for the killing of Canadians, all the while why DWDC receives government funding to advocate for killing Canadians. Which brings me to my next point.

7) Heath Canada is investing more money in MAID, to train doctors to kill people. 

How about instead we invest that money in palliative care?

8) DWDC wants to remove the RFND (reasonably foreseeable natural death) clause. In other words, further relax any safeguards that are left to protect people.

9) Health Canada has an end-of-life care unit. 18 people work here. An entire section devoted to working on euthanasia. I am not kidding. Once again, why don't we invest these 18 salaries into palliative care? If we use an average salary of $80,000 (and this figure is probably low), that would be $1,440,000/year we could put towards palliative care.

Rules for abortion on demand

Check out Jonathan Kay: Some questions for Carolyn Bennett (and my other pro-choice critics) on late term abortions.

He talks about what MP Carolyn Bennett says about his article this weekend:
"Over the weekend, Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett wrote a brief rebuttal, in which she declared: “I am totally fed up with ‘lawyered’ assertions that totally misrepresent the facts. While in Canada, we do not have a law, we do have very strict professional guidelines. No physician in Canada can terminate a pregnancy over 24 weeks without serious indications: the life of the mother at risk, or the fetus has very serious malformations.”

Ms. Bennett also said:
"I challenge him to find ONE late trimester abortion perfomed in Canada to a healthy mother with a healthy fetus. I am one of many politicians ‘willing to tackle’ this subject. He needs to be one of many journalists who are prepared to admit when their fine prose may have misled Canadians …in this case to admit that late-trimester abortions are NOT happening in Canada without ‘reason’."

Well I would like to challenge Ms. Bennett to tell us how she can know that late-trimester abortions are NOT happening without reason? Because nobody else in Canada knows the reasons for late-term abortions as I've written here and here. Why? Because that information is neither captured nor reported. If she does know, then she needs to share that information with the rest of us so we can all be smart.

Then Mr. Kay asks a question:
"my question is this: How is this status quo meaningfully different from a federal abortion law that sets 24 weeks as the gestational limit for elective abortion? The current Canadian policy, as Ms. Bennett describes and praises it, is basically a civil variant of the one encoded in the criminal laws of just about every European nation — except that most of those countries generally have gestational limits well below 24 weeks (12-18 weeks is typical).

And so I ask: If some Canadian decision-making body is going to determine when a women is allowed to have an abortion on demand, why is it better that such a body be composed of unelected doctors, rather than elected politicians?"

Good question. I know how I'd answer it.

Debate: Should physicians provide, or refer for, abortion? (who declined to debate)

A "pro-choice" commenter to my blog said that:
"this debate was a total set-up. no one from the pro-choice community in ottawa was asked to participate in the debate. while it was nice that jovan accepted the non-invitation, he did not have the background or experience to argue from the perspective of the pro-choice movement and ended up making some pretty oppressive and ineffectivley thought-out arguments. stephanie spends her entire career articulating these issues, of course she "won". but the pro-life side certainly didn't gain any credibility for such a poorly run event."

So I checked it out, to see exactly who was invited to debate Stephanie Gray.

Here is the list of people who either declined, or did not reply, or ignored the organizers' invitations.

i. Dr. Henry Morgentaler (declined to debate)

ii. Heather Mallick ("pro-choice" columnist for the Toronto Star) (no reply to invitation)

iii. Hon. Dr. Hedy Fry (MP) (declined to debate)

iv. Hon. Dr. Carolyn Bennett (MP) (declined to debate)

v. Dr. Kathryn Treehuba, Uof Ottawa professor (Obs-Gyn), and Ottawa-area abortion provider (no reply to invitation)

vi. Dr. Fraser Fellows, UWO professor (Obs-Gyn), and London-area abortion provider (no reply to invitation)

vii. Federation of Medical Women of Canada (declined to debate)

viii. Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada- Joyce Arthur (declined to debate)

ix. NDP Party (no reply to invitation)

x. Canadians for Choice (declined to debate)
xi. Action Canada for Population Development (no reply to invitation) 

xii. Hon. Dr. Keith Martin (MP) (No reply to invitation)
xiii. Planned Parenthood Ottawa (Heather Holland - Executive Director- Declined to debate)
xiv. Canadian Federation for Sexual Health (no reply to invitation) 
xv. Professor Sanda Rodgers (University of Ottawa) (declined to debate)
xvi. Professor Wayne Sumner (University of Toronto) (declined to debate)

If the "pro-choicers" were not happy with Jovan Morales representing their position, they have only themselves to blame. They were given plenty of opportunity to participate, and declined to.

I guess they thought they could shut down the debate this way. Well, how well did that work out for them? Not too good I'd say.

Maybe they'll think twice next time, before rejecting or ignoring invitations to debate.