Time to put Quebec's euthanasia bill out of its misery

The Time to Stop the Euthanasia Train from Running off the Tracks is Now!

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Published on Friday, 21 February 2014 08:55

Bill 52 Update: By God's grace, Quebec's euthanasia bill was stalled by the opposition Liberals on Thursday, preventing it from being passed. The governing PQ party pushed hard for a vote so that it could become law before they called an election. Now they will be forced to decide whether to proceed with an election call. Either way, we can be thankful that some time has been bought. Please pray earnestly for a softening of hearts in Quebec and across this land.

Now is the Time to Keep the Euthanasia Train from Running off the Tracks!

By Mark Penninga, ARPACanada.ca: In her article "assisted suicide – what could possibly go wrong" the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente looks at how Belgium's and Holland's euthanasia laws are running off the rails. As Quebec is on the verge of legalizing euthanasia, she rightly concludes that our ethical dilemmas may only be just beginning. And that is it. End of article.

Wente's uncomfortable musing about what kind of reasons are compelling enough to justify euthanasia shows why Canada needs to stop rushing to make decisions about life and death.

The central problem with trying to determine what justifies state-sanctioned death is that it puts the value of human life on an arbitrary scale. At the top of the scale are the terminally ill – those for whom death seems imminent. A little lower we find those with life-altering diseases. Although Canada isn't quite ready to talk about it yet, Belgium and Holland reveal that it only takes a decade to expand the scale to include the depressed, physiologically troubled, and even infants born with a cleft-palette. By that point there is some recognition that the train has run off the rails. But what exactly was that line where life ought to be protected and valued?

Western society forgets its lessons so quickly. It was less than 70 years ago that we looked at this exact question. Dr. Leo Alexander was an investigator in the Nuremberg Trials and also contributed to writing the Nuremberg Code. In 1949 Dr. Alexander wrote an article in the New England Journal of Medicine where he revealed some telling observations from the trials:

Whatever proportions these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitudes of physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic to the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans.

In other words, expanding euthanasia to children is not the end of the scale. This is not merely a "slippery slope." It is a logical progression. The euthanasia movement does what it can to sterilize and even celebrate what it stands for, using terms like "dying with dignity." But putting a white coat on the person administering the needle doesn't change what is happening. Society is sanctioning the death of humans whom we (the strong) determine should not be worth living.

The train runs off the tracks as soon as we decide that some lives are not worth living. When we grant that human dignity is lost because of a disease, we make the value of human life into something that is arbitrary and violable. This undermines basic human rights, which presuppose inalienable worthiness of life for all humanity, regardless of our vulnerabilities.

If we don't want Canada to look like what we see in Belgium, the time to prevent that is now, before we allow euthanasia for even a few.

Legal euthanasia: will anyone be safe?

Natalie Sonnen from LifeCanada speaks to Mark Sutcliffe on CFRA about Quebec's recent tabling of Bill 52 which would provide "medical aid to die". The podcast is the one for June 14 with Natalie's name on it.

She tells us that people in Belgium and the Netherlands are killed without their consent by both nurses and doctors. A frightening reality.

Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition tells us that the Quebec bill is in fact euthanasia, and not assisted suicide, like they would have us believe:

"On June 12, the Quebec national assembly introduced Bill 52: An Act respecting end-of-life care to legalize euthanasia in Quebec. Euthanasia is an action or omission that is directly and intentionally done to cause the death of another person, to eliminate suffering. Euthanasia is a form of homicide.

Yes, Bill 52 legalizes euthanasia, even though media reports and other groups continue to refer to it as assisted suicide."

See what else Schadenberg tells us about Belgium, quoting research from both the Canadian and British Medical Journals:

"A study that was published in the CMAJ(June 2010) examining the responses to questionnaires by nurses regarding their experience with euthanasia in Belgium found that even though the Belgian euthanasia law does not permit nurses to assist death, 14 nurses admitted to doing so and two of those nurses admitted that they did it without consulting a physician. Clearly these acts are outside of the legal parameters of the Belgian euthanasia law. The data found that usually the patient was in the hospital and over the age of 80.

A second study that was published by the BMJ(Nov 2010) examining data by Belgian doctors to questionnaires, found that 47% of all assisted deaths were not reported. The data also indicated that the legal requirement to consult a second physician was only done 73% of the time when the assisted death was reported and only 12% of the time when the assisted death was not reported. Unreported assisted deaths usually involved patients who were in the hospital and over the age of 80.

A third study was published in the CMAJ(June 2010) examining the responses by doctors in the Flanders region of Belgium to questionnaires found that 32% of the assisted deaths were done without explicit request. This study found that 91% of these assisted deaths were done to people who were unable to request an assisted death. Usually the patient was in the hospital and over the age of 80."

It only took 19 years for abortion to become a free for all in Canada when in 1988, the Supreme Court struck down our 1969 abortion law. We went from abortion being illegal, to being fully legal without restriction. If Quebec legalizes euthanasia, which province will be next and how long will it take the whole country to accept the practice?

And will it stop there? What about euthanizing younger people?

Read these ominous words from the Vancouver Sun:

"Claude Leblond, president of the provincial order of social workers and family therapists, said the bill is a major step forward.

"It took women years to get recognition for their fundamental right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy," he said. "When acquired, the right to seek medical aid in dying will be a comparable victory." [Killing people is a "victory"?]

He said while only requests by adults will now be considered, the day may come when the wishes of children will also have to be taken into account." [Euthanizing children?]

If we legalize euthanasia, the gap between who is safe from intentional killing and who is not safe, will only narrow. From abortion and infanticide (Peter Singer already advocates this) at the beginning of life--to euthanasia at the end of life, and maybe even children.

All it takes is 19 years.