Category: Assisted suicide

Canada’s Catholic hospitals in a tough spot on assisted death

Globe and Mail

Sean Fine

It started with a Supreme Court ruling that government could not criminalize doctor-assisted death. Now, a parliamentary committee is recommending that all publicly funded health-care institutions provide the service, and major Catholic hospitals such as St. Paul’s in Vancouver and St. Joseph’s in Hamilton are drawing a line in the sand against it.

Canada is being thrust into its biggest religious-freedom debate since Quebec’s proposed charter of values three years ago would have banned the wearing of turbans, kippahs and hijabs by government employees.

Is the committee recommending one kind of unconstitutional act replace another? Or are religious institutions failing to live up to their obligations in the public sphere?

At the heart of the committee’s recommendations was a kind of contradiction: Doctors should have the freedom of conscience not to have to provide assisted death, the committee said. But institutions should not have the same freedom of conscience. . . [Full Text]

 

Doctors should be named in patient’s right-to-die request: media lawyer

The Globe and Mail

Sean Fine

Lawyers for an 80-year-old man with aggressive lymphoma asked a Toronto judge on Thursday for privacy for him, his family and his doctors as he seeks a court’s permission for an assisted death. But a media lawyer argued it may be in the public interest to know the names of the doctors, and said he would like to see evidence that would explain why their identities should remain private.

“There are going to be other applications like this – it may be relevant to the public and the court to hear whether these are always the same doctors … rubber-stamp types,” lawyer Peter Jacobsen, representing The Globe and Mail, Postmedia, the CBC and CTV, told Justice Thomas McEwen of the Ontario Superior Court. “And for those who wish to come forward in the future, they may wish to know who these doctors are.”

Andrew Faith, a lawyer for the man with lymphoma, replied that putting the doctors’ names “on the front page of the newspaper” would make it more difficult for other patients, and perhaps even his own client, to find a doctor willing to provide this medical service. . . [Full Text]

 

Right-to-die hits another snag with nurses

Nursing regulator in B.C. says it’s not yet clear that court ruling allowing assisted death protects participating nurses

Vancouver Sun

Jeff Lee

A B.C. doctor leading the efforts to provide physician-assisted dying says she’s being thwarted in her efforts to recruit nurses to help administer intravenous drugs.

On Monday Dr. Ellen Wiebe, the medical director of the Willow Women’s Centre in Vancouver, assisted a Calgary woman with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in dying after an Alberta court issued an exemption allowing the assistance.

Wiebe said on Thursday that she has a case going to B.C. Supreme Court next week in which a patient has chosen to die at home using intravenous medications. But she said the College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia “does not support this.” . . . [Full text]

 

I support assisted suicide, but what we’re proposing goes too far

National Post

John Moore

I have spent years campaigning for the right of doctor assisted death. Now Canada is about to establish that right and I find myself arguing against the very thing I asked for. This is not the assisted death I was looking for.

In debates on TV and radio I was always pitted against people I regarded as tedious scolds. They have moral and religious objections to anything but a natural death and they’re presumptuous enough to think all of us should hew to their personal convictions. They have a habit of grossly exaggerating or misrepresenting stories from jurisdictions where there are frameworks for the state helping people to die. They pretend that fully functioning people, the disabled and unwanted elders are being dispatched not only with glee but often against their will. These arguments were never hard to refute.

But now I find myself somewhat uncomfortably sharing the same side of the table with some of these people, even if their “I told you sos” don’t quite add up. . . [Full Text]

 

Cardinal Collins Presses for Protection of Conscience and the Vulnerable as Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide Legislation Prepared

Canadians coast to coast encouraged to take action

News Release

Archdiocese of Toronto

TORONTO (March 2, 2016) As legislation is prepared to legalize euthanasia/assisted suicide in Canada, the Archbishop of Toronto is calling on the federal government to protect the vulnerable and those who care for them. In a statement released Wednesday, Cardinal Thomas Collins expressed shock at federal joint committee recommendations that would force health care workers and institutions to offer or refer assisted death:

“Physicians across our country who have devoted their lives to healing patients will soon be asked to do the exact opposite. They will not be asked to ease their suffering by providing them with treatment and loving care, but by putting them to death.”

The archbishop highlighted other committee recommendations that would profoundly impact the vulnerable, including:

• A desire to allow, in three years from now, access to euthanasia/assisted suicide for minors (those under 18).

• The ability for those suffering from conditions like dementia to pre-schedule the date of their death.

• Insistence that those with psychiatric conditions be eligible for euthanasia/assisted suicide.

Cardinal Collins stated: “Once we make people’s worthiness to live dependent on how well they function, our society has crossed the boundary into dangerous territory in which people are treated as objects that can be discarded as useless.”

The archbishop has invited all those who share his concerns to visit CanadiansforConscience.ca and join the Coalition for HealthCARE and Conscience. The coalition includes more than 5,000 Canadian doctors with a common mission to respect the sanctity of human life.

CanadiansforConscience.ca portal provides numerous resources, including an opportunity for people to easily share their concerns directly with their local member of parliament.

Cardinal Collins’ statement will be read or shown by video this weekend in more than 200 Catholic churches across the Archdiocese of Toronto. –

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On Sunday, March 6, 2016, Cardinal Collins will deliver his statement at St. Paul’s Basilica at the 11 a.m. Mass. He will meet with the media following Mass.

Media Contacts:

Neil MacCarthy, Director, Public Relations & Communications,
Archdiocese of Toronto (416) 934-3400 x 552, neilm@archtoronto.org
(416) 879-2846 (cell) www.archtoronto.org

Bill Steinburg, Communications Manager
(416) 934-3400 x 558,
bills@archtoronto.org
(416) 708-9655 (cell)