Category: Canada

Orthodox doctors wrestle with ethics of ‘assisted suicide’

The Canadian Jewish News

Barbara Silverstein

Dr. Albert Kirshen said it’s just a matter of time before one of his patients asks him for assistance to die. Kirshen, an observant Jew who is a physician at the Temmy Latner Centre for Palliative Care at Mount Sinai Hospital, said he is bracing himself for the inevitable.

Kirshen is “personally conflicted” and struggling with the new Supreme Court-mandated policy that will permit physician-assisted death (PAD), he said, explaining that while the medical college will require him to accommodate a patient’s request to die, Jewish law does not permit him to make a referral for the termination of a life.

Kirshen spoke to the issue at a town hall meeting on “the implications of the proposed federal assisted suicide legislation on the practice of medicine,” held March 7 at Shaarei Shomayim Congregation in Toronto. About 300 people, many of them physicians, packed the shul’s social hall to learn more about the issue from an Orthodox perspective that reflected the views of rabbis, physicians and a legal expert. . . [Full text]

 

The legality of assisted suicide does not mean the issue is ‘closed’

National Post

John Robson

A leading bishop raised the possibility this week that Roman Catholics who consider doctor-assisted suicide may be denied last rites, as the Church considers it assisted suicide a “morally great evil” despite the fact it will soon be protected by legislation. In doing so, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast reminded us that Canada is a free country. At least, it should do so. And it should be.

Insofar as possible in Canada, where we have traditionally enjoyed liberty under law, we leave people to work things out for themselves. When we do have to deal with something through the power of the state, we discuss it freely both before and after a political decision is made, and coerce citizens only to the minimum compatible with the rule of law. Especially on as contentious a subject as euthanasia. . . [Full Text]

 

Don’t trample other folks’ rights with euthanasia

The Province

Gordon Clark

It’s not often that an issue comes along where I struggle to figure out where I stand, especially after considering various points of view. But like many people I’ve spoken with recently, I sure find myself conflicted about euthanasia which, thanks to last year’s Supreme Court of Canada ruling, is rapidly becoming transmogrified from murder into a publicly funded health-care service not much different than an emergency appendectomy.

The court has given the federal government until June 6 to draft the rules by which doctors will be permitted to end the lives of suffering people who consent to be killed. . . [Full Text]

Canada Catholic head: ‘Unjust’ to force doctors on assisted suicide

The Gobe and Mail

Ethan Lou

TORONTO — Reuters.  The head of Canada’s biggest Catholic group opposed the country’s pending doctor-assisted suicide legislation in a statement to be read at 225 Toronto churches on Sunday, saying it was “unjust” to force doctors to act against their conscience.

“It is unjust to force people to act against their conscience in order to be allowed to practice as a physician,” Cardinal Thomas Collins, head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, said in the text of his statement.

Canada’s Supreme Court struck down a ban on assisted suicide in 2015 and gave lawmakers a year to come up with legislation to regulate the practice.

The newly elected Liberal government was given a four-month extension this year to a develop a national law for the practice, under which doctors opposed to assisted suicide have to recommend someone willing to perform it. . . [Full text]

 

Doctor affiliated with Catholic hospital speaks out against assisted-death ban

  The Globe and Mail

Laura Kane

A doctor affiliated with a Catholic hospital in a small British Columbia community says the facility’s likely ban on assisted-dying is a violation of terminally ill patients’ charter rights.

Dr. Jonathan Reggler said St. Joseph’s General Hospital is the only hospital in the Comox Valley and as a Catholic facility it generally forbids doctors from helping patients die, although a formal policy has not yet been adopted.

Reggler said terminally ill patients in hospital who want a doctor’s help to die will either be denied that right or have to be moved 50 kilometres to the nearest hospital in Campbell River. . . [Full text]