How to become popular in a hurry - say you support the killing of preborn children

What are the first public words out of Mike Duffy's mouth after two and a half years away from the Senate?

"Minister, I'll make this quick because I know you're on a tight time schedule. I represent Prince Edward Island and there, women in P.E.I. have, for some time, had concerns about access to full medical facilities, medical services for women. That's recently changed, and that's a good thing," 

"Have you thought ... about what mechanisms the federal government might have, i.e. the Canada Health Act, cash, money, to ensure that this service you're proposing will be available everywhere in Canada?"

Minister Jane Philpott thought Duffy's question was "excellent".

Take an unpopular person, decide to become "pro-choice", then ask a pro-abortion question. And voila. You will become the darling of the pro-abortions.

When you want to be liked, it's a pretty good strategy you got to admit.

Catholic bishops - no "right" to assisted suicide

CCCB brief on Bill C-14 (“medical assistance in dying”) to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights

Tuesday, May 03 2016

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As clearly stated in its previous statements on this issue, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops absolutely and categorically disagrees with any attempt at justifying or supporting a "right" to assisted suicide or euthanasia. This is based on the unchanging teaching of our Church, derived from the teaching of Christ himself, that these practices are always inherently wrong (cf.Catechism of the Catholic Church 2276-79; St. John Paul II,  n. 66). For this reason, Bill C-14, which legalizes the killing of certain categories of persons, is a fundamentally unjust law. From the Catholic perspective, no amendments could legitimate the inherent evil in the premises behind the proposed legislation.

While the legislation is itself intrinsically and gravely immoral for the reasons stated above, there are particular characteristics of the current draft of Bill C-14 which make it even more damaging and dangerous to Canadian society. For example, it contains no protections for health care workers who refuse to cooperate in so-called "medical assistance in dying" or to give an effective referral, nor to institutions that refuse to provide the service for religious or conscientious reasons. Leaving such protections to provincial legislators or professional organizations (such as provincial colleges of physicians, pharmacists, or nurses) would result in a chaotic situation with conflicting rules between provinces and would effectively prompt the resignation or removal of many health care professionals. It could also potentially force the closure of hospitals operated under religious auspices, most of which are Catholic. These institutions employ thousands of physicians and tens of thousands of staff. At a time when our health care system requires more resources, not less, the federal government should not allow lower jurisdictions to drive conscientious health care practitioners from their professions.

It is also regrettable that Bill C-14 fails in what appears to be an attempt to limit the potential harm caused by legalizing assisted suicide, as in the criterion enunciated in section 241.2(d) (that a person's "natural death has become reasonably foreseeable"). Every person who has reflected on their own mortal existence knows that their own natural death is not only reasonably foreseeable, but indeed inevitable. This "safeguard" will protect no one.

The teaching of the Catholic Church and the stance of the Catholic Bishops of Canada affirm the sacredness and dignity of human life. Suicide and euthanasia are contrary to the most profound natural inclination of each human being to live and preserve life. Furthermore, they contradict the fundamental responsibility that human beings have to protect one another and to enhance the quality of health and social care which every human life deserves, from conception to natural death.

Bill C-14, no matter how it may be amended, is an affront to human dignity, an erosion of human solidarity, and a danger to all vulnerable persons – particularly the aged, disabled, infirm and sick who so often find themselves isolated and marginalized. Moreover, it is a violation of the sacrosanct duty of healthcare providers to heal, and the responsibility of legislators and citizens to assure and provide protection for all, especially those persons most at risk. The passage of Bill C-14, occasioned by the seriously flawed Carter decision, will have devastating effects on the social fabric of our country that cannot be predicted today.

2 May 2016

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops is the national assembly of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic Bishops. As its principal pastors who officially speak on behalf of the Church in Canada, the Bishops are the spiritual leaders and teachers of more than thirteen million Canadian Catholics. Forty-six per cent of Canadians are baptized Catholics.

Conscience rights are violated with Bill C-14

From the Protection of Conscience Project:

"... it is necessary to emphatically reaffirm that conscientious refusal to kill people is a manifestation of essential humanity that deserves the protection of law... 

...Bill C-14 does not provide that protection. The government is deliberately ignoring the ongoing coercion of health care providers to compel participation in euthanasia, and Bill C-14 will allow coercion to continue..." 

...the federal government can prevent such coercion because it has exclusive jurisdiction in criminal law. It can enact a law to prevent powerful groups, professions, or state institutions from forcing people to be parties to homicide and suicide. It can prevent those in power from punishing health care providers who refuse to arrange for their patients to be killed or helped commit suicide...

...It is true that the bill’s preamble states that the government will “respect the personal convictions of health care providers.” But – aside from the fact that preambles have no legal effect – what is that worth? 

...the Special Joint Committee claimed that respect for freedom of conscience is exemplified by their recommendation that, “at a minimum,” objecting physicians should be forced to find colleagues willing to kill their patients. Behind this Orwellian perversion lies the Committee’s more astonishing premise: that the state can legitimately order people to become parties to homicide and suicide, and punish them if they refuse. 

...Whatever else it might decide about euthanasia and assisted suicide, parliament should make it the law of the land that no one and no institution in Canada can be forced to be a party to homicide or suicide, and no one will be punished or disadvantaged for refusing to do so.”

Assisted suicide - its chilling reality

Good letter in today's National Post:

Re: Euthanasia Makes Us All Complicit, Andrew Coyne, April 19.In his book, Other People’s Lives: Reflections on Medicine, Ethics and Euthanasia, Richard Fenigsen wrote that, “In Holland, the country much praised for its practice of voluntary euthanasia, the lives of 400 disabled newborns are terminated every year by denial of medical assistance, dehydration/starvation and lethal injections. The reports of government-ordered studies revealed that lethal injections are given to 1,000 gravely ill persons who had never asked for death, but have a “low quality of life” or “no prospect of improvement;” some were killed “because the families could not take it anymore” or even because their beds were needed. Thus, along with the voluntary euthanasia that is going on, we witness the extermination of persons who embarrass their families, are undesirable for society, or arbitrarily judged unfit by doctors.

In a society, the ones who are in most need of protection are infants, children, the aged, the weak, the infirm and the marginalized. We are slowly turning into a society that, under guise of constitutional guarantees of freedom, autonomy and self-determination, is riding the slippery slope of exterminating the very people who need our protection the most. 

Cynthia Robles, Mississauga, Ont.

Quote by St. Thomas More

"Men desire authority for its own sake that they may bear a rule, command and control over men, and live uncommanded and uncontrolled themselves."