Thursday, February 11, 2016

Canada's euthanasia lobby pushes euthanasia for people who cannot consent.

By Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director - Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

A recent poll commissioned by the euthanasia lobby was designed to pressure Canada's parliament to approve euthanasia for incompetent people with advanced dementia.

The Supreme Court February 2015 Carter decision permitted euthanasia for:
“a competent adult person who
(1) clearly consents to the termination of life and
(2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition.”
The Supreme Court decision stated that the person must clearly consent, but the euthanasia lobby is not satisfied with limiting euthanasia to consenting adults so they designed a poll to suggest that 80 per cent of Canadians agree that individuals with a terminal medical condition like dementia should be permitted to consent to assisted death in advance. 

According to a recent study from Belgium, where assisted death was legalized for competent adults in 2002, there were more than 1000 assisted deaths without explicit request in 2013.

The euthanasia lobby wants you to believe that they only support euthanasia for people who are competent, terminally ill and suffering, but in reality they also want euthanasia without an explicit consent for incompetent people. 

If this is about "freedom of choice," as the euthanasia lobby claims, how can it be assured that the person with dementia is freely choosing to be killed? 

The euthanasia lobby is not satisfied with the Supreme Court decision to limit killing to people who clearly consent, they also want death for people who they define as better off dead and who cannot consent.

2 comments:

gadfly said...

Let's not forget about presumed consent...the notion that a doctor who thinks they're suffering too much by watching you can pretend that you said yes and kills you. Or gets a nurse/flunky to do it for them. It was never about choice at the end of life. It's about killing the undesireables and improving the human race thereby.

As well, the notion that doctors cannot opt out and have to refer makes everyone guilty by causal chain: if a doctor protests about killing, the immediate response shall be: "How many people have you referred to death? Why didn't you say no?"

E. Maureen Moss said...

Killing somebody .... regardless of the high-sounding 'medical' name you put on it - is still MURDER.