Assisted Suicide

 

Death on Demand Coming to Canada?

By Wesley J. Smith

Canadian Member of Parliament Steven Fletcher

No more justifications that assisted suicide is about the “terminally ill for whom nothing can be done to alleviate suffering.” That patently isn’t true. Legislative proposals/laws that limit doctor-prescribed death to the terminally ill never have the “nothing can be done to alleviate suffering” part.
Thus, these restrictions are best seen for what they are–mere political expediencies deemed necessary by death ideologues to get the ball rolling. For that matter, so are requirements mandating that the patient actually take their own lives. Active euthanasia is the actual destination and always has been.
Here’s another example of the broad death license that the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement seeks: Legislation has been introduced in Canada’s Parliament to legalize assisted suicide, and once again the “strict guidelines” are broad enough to drive a hearse through. From “The Right to Die Well,” by the bill’s author, Steven Fletcher:

“Having been diagnosed by a physician with an illness, a disease or a disability (including disability arising from traumatic injury) that causes intolerable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be alleviated by any medical treatment acceptable to that person, or;

“Being in a state of weakening capacity with no chance of improvement and being of sound mind and capable of fully understanding the information provided to him or her under other sections of the law.”

Note, this isn’t the same thing as saying there is no way to alleviate “pain” since the suffering can be psychological. Also, that including the phrase ”acceptable to that person,” would mean that there would be no objective way to measure or judge any of this.
Besides, any suicidal person thinks there is no way to alleviate their suffering. Should this bill become law, it won’t be long before it extends to mental illness–which, after all can cause far more suffering than a physical malady. Indeed, that is precisely what happened in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.

This bill probably won’t pass before the next election. But the ground is being prepared for a radical lurch. I think Fletcher is right that the Supreme Court of Canada wants to strike down the existing anti-assisted suicide law.
And don’t think that beneath the surface this isn’t about health care costs. Throughout the West, a lot of effort is underway to take expensive patients off the books.
People with disabilities, the elderly, the chronically ill, and eventually the mentally ill in Canada could soon be in the maw of the culture of death, masking as compassion.
Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s blog.

Source: NRLC News