Why Canada’s culture of death concerns us all
by Kate Dunlop, The Conservative Woman:
CANADA is poised to legalise euthanasia for disabled and mentally ill people.
Euthanasia is a horrible subject for open discussion as it scores high on the Richter scale of both fear and emotion. The Slippery Slope Argument and the shadow of eugenics can cloud out any hope of rational discourse. The debate naturally swings from individuals’ right to live, and hence to die, in a manner of their own choosing, to whether a just society ought to seek all means to preserve life.
In the US, Canada’s neighbour, euthanasia is illegal in every state, including Oregon where folks have nonetheless been killing themselves under legislative cover of the Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) since 1997.The statute permits ‘terminally ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of a lethal dose of medication, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose’.
It has been hailed as a great success, and a bonus is that as ‘participation’ under the DWDA is legally not suicide, the costs may even be covered by insurance.
Canada’s Supreme Court was clearly influenced by events in Oregon, and imposed a positive right to euthanasia in 2015 with its ruling ‘Medical Assistance in Dying’ (MAID). Parliament then legislated to include ‘some protections’, prime among them being that death must be ‘reasonably foreseeable’ to qualify for a lethal jab.
MAID was only the start for Canada. Advocates for euthanasia continued to agitate to expand eligibility, citing developments elsewhere in the West, such as Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, who all have forms of euthanasia. They filed multiple lawsuits, one of which was successful in coercing doctors to participate by a court ruling that a patient’s right to be euthanised trumped their doctor’s conscientious objection.
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