The biggest problem with assisted death - patient safety

Thank goodness the Globe and Mail hasn't completely lost their way. Margaret Wente argues for the important question:

"Is there any place for conscience in medicine?"

She argues that:

"Faith-based institutions are places where you’re most likely to find that elusive promise of “patient-centred care” (the cruellest cliché in medicine, in my view). The culture of an institution is what makes all the difference to the quality of care. Many secular people who work in faith-based institutions are among the biggest opponents of the idea that they must be made to offer medically assisted death. 

The death dogmatists argue that people will suffer terrible hardship if they can’t get assisted death anywhere. They’ll be shipped around like so much freight, until someone takes them in and helps them die. This is rubbish. In fact, patients are transferred all the time for procedures (including assisted death) that aren’t offered where they are. Issues of access are pretty easy to resolve if people of goodwill put their heads together."

But what about people who don't want assisted death? Where can they safely go? If I am dying, and I go to a faith-based institution to die, I can be assured that I won't be killed. I won't ever be assured of that in an institution where assisted death is practiced:

"Dr. Leung told me that at a recent conference on palliative care, people had already begun talking about when it might be appropriate to introduce the idea of medically assisted death to patients who might be eligible. In his view this is the slipperiest of slopes. “I’ve seen so many seniors in hospitals,” he says. “They’re alone, they’re frightened, and they don’t know what their doctors are doing. We need to keep safe spaces for them.”

Having volunteered in a nursing home, I see this as a big concern. There are residents in these homes who are incapable of advocating for themselves, and many have no one else to advocate for them either. How do we protect them? We can't.

Residing in an institution where assisted death is not practiced, they will be safe. If these places do not exist, who can be safe?

Globe and Mail - your bias is showing

I just read this by ELIZABETH RENZETTI about the closing of the Morgentaler clinc in New Brunswick

Abortion in New Brunswick: The vise tightens, and activists push back

"With a provincial election looming in September, New Brunswick Liberal Leader Brian Gallant has promised a “review” of the province’s abortion policy if his party wins, but that is hardly a ringing call to equal access for all, or a promise to get rid of Regulation 84-20, which prevents women in the province having the same rights as women across the country. 

The fight for reproductive freedom in New Brunswick has been long and bitter, even before then-premier Frank McKenna laid down his challenge: “If Mr. Morgentaler tries to open a clinic in the province of New Brunswick, he’s going to get the fight of his life.” Now, 25 years later, Dr. Morgentaler is gone and the clinic that bears his name is on the verge of disappearing, too. That is, unless some generous people across the country decide that this is a fight worth digging deep for, in the understanding that when some of us lose our rights, we all do."

"reproductive freedom" , "lose our rights", "equal access for all", "prevents women in the province having the same rights as women across the country."

It's all there. The "pro-choice" manifesto key-words for beginners.

So then I went to the three links on the same page under the title:

MORE RELATED TO THIS STORY

• KONRAD YAKABUSKI Does a doctor’s religion trump your prescription?
• GLOBE EDITORIAL Don’t try to separate abortion from maternal health
• GOLDENBERG Trudeau’s pro-choice decree is democratic, not dictatorial

More "pro-choice" dogma, all of them.

So I went searching on the Globe's site for maybe, you know, a pro-life viewpoint? Nope. There is none. Two more "pro-choice" pieces:

Outside big cities, abortion services still hard to find

Canada must do more to prevent unsafe abortions (by Niki Ashton and HÉLÈNE LAVERDIÈRE)

"Access to safe abortion doesn’t just save lives. The evidence is irrefutable – women and girls who have access to the full range of family planning services are healthier, better educated and contribute more to their national economies and societies. Canada needs to lead with a comprehensive approach to gender equality that is evidence-based and centered on empowering women and girls. 

For New Democrats, access to safe abortion is a human right. We know that family planning and reproductive choice play a crucial role in the well-being of women. Women who have access to the full range of family planning options are empowered to make better decisions about caring for their family. It also gives women an opportunity to realize their full potential by allowing them to fully participate in their economies and communities."

Now I did find this by Margaret Wente, which was at least somewhat balanced:
Spare me the abortion absolutism

Then I found this video:
Is ‘Emily’s Abortion Video’ an accurate depiction of what it’s like to have an abortion?

It broke my heart. Emily says:

"I don't feel like a bad person. I don't feel guilty. I feel in awe that I can make a baby, That I can make a life. I knew that what I was going to was right. It was right for me and no-one else."

All I could think about when watching the video, was that a very young child just lost her life. While the cameras were rolling. All in the name of a women's rights. They don't talk about that at the Globe and Mail.

Good bye Globe and Mail

Dear Mr. Stackhouse,
It is time that we and the Globe and Mail parted ways.

My husband and I have subscribed to your newspaper for many many years. Our current subscription expired on June 4, 2010 and we will not be renewing it.

The Globe and Mail has regressed steadily to the left over time and basically there is little left that we care to read anymore. My husband still enjoys Neil Reynolds, Christie Blatchford and John Ibbitson but has completely stopped reading your editorials, Jeffrey Simpson and Lawrence Martin. For me, I have grown weary of your anti-pro-life bias and in fact your general anti-religious bias.

Pro-life articles or letters to the editor are rarely published by the Globe. In fact I'm not sure I have ever seen a pro-life article in your newspaper. Recently when Lysiane Gagnon and Margaret Wente both wrote pro-abortion articles, there were no letters published that refuted what they said. Did you not receive any? I understand that not all letters can be published but surely a newspaper as reputable and as old as the Globe and Mail could at the very least have the journalistic integrity to print alternate view points some of the time.

We now subscribe to the National Post which is not only more in line with our points of view, but it does have the courage and journalistic integrity to publish letters on both sides of any topic including abortion and religion.

Sincerely,
Patricia Maloney

What would the Martians think? (Part 4...why late-term abortions are not inconsequential)

In my Martian series, I wanted to write next about what Dawn Fowler Canadian Director, National Abortion Federation (NAF) says about late-term abortions.

Ms. Fowler says:
"According to data obtained through CIHI, 0.08% of abortions in 2004 were provided after 20 weeks gestation. This percentage does not support the notion promulgated by abortion opponents that women in Canada routinely obtain abortion care up to nine months of pregnancy. In fact, nearly 80% of abortions are provided during the first trimester (12 weeks) of pregnancy."

Then out of the sky drops Margaret Wente’s, tired timeworn throwaway pro-abortion comment regarding this very subject. Ms. Wente says "Virtually no late-term abortions – the rarest and most contentious kind – are performed here".

In other words, that pretty much takes care of the notion of late-term abortions--what other pro-life concerns can we dispense with?

Not so fast ladies.

Let’s look at the statistics from Statistics Canada. Ms. Fowler says that only .08 or 401 late-term abortions were done in 2004. (my more recent 2006 statistics say 464 so I will use these stats).

We know that Canada had at least 464 late-term abortions in 2006. That’s equivalent to a large elementary school of laughing screaming having fun children. Dead. Yanked out of their mother’s womb with a pick-ax to the brain or some such hideous "procedure" (another in a long line of pro-abortion euphemisms).

The reason I say "at least" is because--and you'll never hear an abortion advocate talk about this--Statistics Canada says in a foot note next to the number 55,006:
"Note the large number of induced abortions with an unknown gestation range."

That is correct. There were fifty-five thousand and six abortions in 2006 for which we do not know the gestational age of the fetus. How many of these were late-term abortions? Well it could be one. Or it could just as easily be that all 55,006 were late-term.

Dr. Paul Ranalli is a neurologist and brain physiology researcher at the University of Toronto. He testified as an expert witness on fetal pain before the House Judiciary. Dr. Ranalli worries about the pain felt by the unborn child in late term abortions, and in fact, Nebraska has approved a bill to ban abortion beyond 20 weeks gestation on the basis of fetal pain.

Tell me, pro-abortion people with your disinterested comments about late-term abortions--does the extreme pain suffered by these unborn children during their late-term abortions bother you even a little bit?

Our Martian friends asks incredulously:
"You mean to say, you destroy between 464 and 55,006 of your offspring yearly, that are fully formed viable human beings, in an excruciating painful manner, and then tell people it is of no consequence?" Yes.

Part 1...Women's "Rights"
Part 2...When the truth isn't the truth
Part 3...Translating Dr. Henry Morgentaler
Part 4...Why late-term abortions are not inconsequential