Service, not Servitude
Dutch News
A special clinic set up to help people whose doctors do not support euthanasia has been reprimanded for failings when it helped an elderly woman who did not want to live in a nursing home to die. The euthanasia monitoring committee said the clinic’s experts had failed to exercise proper care when carrying out their duties. [Full text]
Canada.com
Doctor-hastened death would only be appropriate after all other reasonable choices have been exhausted, says the head of the country’s largest doctors’ group.
Dr. Chris Simpson, newly installed president of the Canadian Medical Association, made the comments in advance of a landmark Supreme Court of Canada hearing expected to add fuel to the emotional end-of-life debate gaining urgency across Canada.
Simpson said there are enough doctors in Canada willing to perform doctor-hastened death, if the federal ban outlawing euthanasia were lifted.
But doctors first need safeguards to protect the vulnerable and a strategy to urgently shore up palliative care “so that this is not seen as a first, or second or even third choice, but a choice that’s appropriate for people after all other reasonable options are exhausted,” he said. [Full text]
An 85 year old woman living on Bowen Island, British Columbia, killed herself with a drug overdose in the presence of her husband because she had developing dementia. She planned to make her death a political statement in favour of the legalization of assisted suicide, writing an extensive blog article explaining her decision and sending a letter to the editor of the Vancouver Sun for posthumous publication. Symptoms of dementia were reportedly progressing and she decided to kill herself before the condition became too advanced. [Vancouver Sun]
Daily Mail
Fewer than one in five doctors would be willing to help patients end their lives, according to a new poll. . . . a survey of 600 doctors by the Medix consultancy found that 60 % are against a change in the law to allow physician-assisted suicide.
This is a rise of 17 points from the last time the same question was asked – just 43% were against a change in 2004 . . . [See full text at Most doctors oppose assisted dying.]
News reports indicate that an immigrant woman whom a friend says was raped in her country of origin discovered that she was pregnant after arriving in Ireland. The friend says that she asked for an abortion when she was eight weeks pregnant, but it is not clear that she was then eligible for the procedure under the new Irish abortion law. According to the reports, she again asked for an abortion in July, threatening suicide, and was found to be suicidal by a panel of two psychiatrists and an obstetrician.
The Irish Constitution and the Irish abortion law hold that the lives of both woman and child are of equal value, and both must be saved if practicable. Since the pregnancy was so far advanced, it was decided that the baby should be delivered by Caesarean section, since that would provide the baby an opportunity to survive. The woman initially refused and refused to take food or fluids. After medical authorities obtained a court order to rehydrate her she consented to the Caesarean and the baby was delivered at about 25 weeks gestation. The baby is now apparently in the custody of the state and being supported in a neonatal ward, while the mother is receiving psychiatric treatment.
The case has reignited the abortion controversy in Ireland.