ProWomanProLife

A great editorial in the Montreal Gazette today, since Quebec is holding hearings about euthanasia these days:

Support for mercy killing is usually couched in terms of dignity, which seems bitterly ironic since it’s hard to think of a more extreme denial of dignity than killing, however benevolent the motive.

I’m very pleased this is their editorial position. So rational, logical and life affirming. From this position, however, it’s only logical to say the same of the unborn. We don’t kill to solve our problems, no matter how big those problems might be.

Oh look, what a surprise:

Euthanasia cases in Holland have increased by 13 per cent in the past year, according to new figures.

Last year a total of 2,636 Dutch people were killed by euthanasia, with 80 per cent of cases involving people dying at home after their doctors administered a lethal dose of drugs. This compares with 2,331 reported deaths in 2008.

In 2003, the year after Holland became the first country since the fall of Nazi Germany to legalize the practice, there were 1,815 cases.

Scary numbers from Belgium:

Almost half of deaths by euthanasia in Belgium have involved patients who have not explicitly requested their lives to be ended by a doctor, a study has suggested.

A fifth of nurses interviewed by researchers admitted that they had been involved in the euthanasia of a patient based on the “assumption” they would want to die. Nearly half of the nurses – 120 of 248 – admitted they had taken part in “terminations without request or consent”.

Euthanasia has been legal in Belgium since 2002. It accounts for two per cent of all deaths annually. The law states that patient consent must be given and that doctors must carry out the procedure. But the study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal shows that the rules are routinely flouted and shows how doctors often delegate the administering of fatal drugs to nurses.

I saw the headline to this story and started worrying, but it turns out they meant “right to die” in the good old-fashioned sense of being allowed to refuse treatment even when doctors think there’s still hope.

Doctors could be struck off if they fail to respect the wishes of terminally ill patients who want to die by refusing treatment, the General Medical Council is to announce.

They must allow the terminally ill to refuse food and water if the patient does not want treatment that prolongs their life and must abide by “living wills” in which patients specify in advance that they do not want to be resuscitated.

I’m sure there are still plenty of problems with patients whose will cannot be clearly expressed (for whatever reason) or with patients who seem to be pressured into death by relatives, and who knows what all. But in principle, if you’re determined not to continue treatment come what may, then your wishes ought to be respected.

The letters page in the National Post is filled with people against the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia, from absolutely every angle. The second reading vote on Francine Lalonde’s “Death with Dignity” bill is today. Let’s hope these letters speak into it NOT passing (which would push it to committee stage). Hopefully this bill will die today.

(here, here, here, here and here–just buy the paper)

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Brigitte adds this update: The bill was defeated, and soundly at that (228 to 59).

Margaret Somerville on why pulling the plug is not the same thing as euthanasia. As an observer of everything bioethics, I can tell you that the distinction is (a) real, and (b) relevant. I believe that a great deal of needless suffering is happening because people are afraid of “euthanizing grandma” by ceasing futile treatment. People die. The human species has a 100% death rate.  Yet, we also have the medical means to keep people alive (i.e. breathing with a heartbeat) beyond their natural ability to do so. We need to understand the subtle yet critical difference between letting go and killing if we are to use the medical means at our disposal wisely and effectively.

I am slowly emerging from maternity leave. As February rolled around, my baby turned one and my mat leave expired. I wasn’t planning to return to work until September but my previous employer made me an offer I couldn’t refuse “in these difficult economic times” and four days later, I was back in my old job.

Working means that in exchange for a pay cheque, I get a whole LUNCH BREAK. For you stay-at-home moms, a lunch break is a fabulous invention of the 20^th century whereby you get to sit down and eat a meal somewhere between snack and nap-time. I know, it’s that crazy! But you know what? I’ve been home with young children for too long: for me, lunch is still stuffing sustenance in with one hand while doing something useful with the other. Hence the blog post. I hope you won’t mind a couple of goat cheese crumbs. It’s not like I can eat goat cheese anywhere else. If anybody asks why I decided to work outside the home, it all comes down to sushi and goat cheese. Yes, I’m that shallow.

Have you ever heard the tidbit “if a really nice guy is rude to waiters, watch out: he’s not a really nice guy”? I am not exactly a waitress but in my line of work – which I cannot better describe than “miscellaneous nitty gritty and random, er, stuff” – I am often the first point of contact between my boss and the world at large. I have noticed that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat the lowest rung in the office hierarchy. Some people are nice and respectful and make me want to find time for them. Others think that throwing weight around in a “do-you-know-who –I-am” kind of way will intimidate me into service.  Others treat me like their foot servant: “I’m emailing you a document (from across the office where all the hardware is on a network), can you print it for me?” Because pressing “attach” and “send” is much more impressive than “print.”

What does all this have to do with pro-life? Just like I can tell a lot about a person by the way I am treated at work, I am wondering if future generations will judge us on the basis of our treatment of the most vulnerable members of our society. The frail, the elderly, the handicapped, the helpless, the unborn. And when historians look back on the medical means at our disposition in parallel with our increasing tolerance toward euthanasia and assisted-suicide, what will they think of us?

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Andrea adds: For Facebook followers, this post, automatically imported into my profile, is not mine. Similarities between me and Veronique include that I do like sushi and goat cheese and I harbour disdain for people who think they are very, very important and try to make others feel small. Differences include that I do not have a one-year-old and am not coming out of maternity leave.

“The management” will look into ways to make it clear who is posting what on Facebook but for the time being, be advised that not every post imported into my Facebook profile is me.

With MP Francine Lalonde’s euthanasia bill – aka C-384 — just around the corner, it never hurts to brush-up on the reasons why euthanasia is wrong. This latest article from Margaret Somerville doesn’t present any new and improved arguments but reminds us why euthanasia, even when justified by compassion, is never morally defensible.

…at the end of life as at the beginning. Here Margaret Somerville highlights how Quebec doctors aren’t likely to be able to debate legalized euthanasia well, since they don’t appear to know what it means:

Dr Barrette said that in caring for terminally ill people, “doctors are aware they can be charged with murder if they administer a ‘palliative sedative’ before a patient is on his or her last breath.” This is not euthanasia, although, like Dr Barrette, 49 percent of Quebec physicians recently polled mistakenly thought it was. Palliative means the sedative was necessary to relieve pain and suffering and was not given with an intention of killing the patient. That cannot result in a murder charge, or any other legal charge, unless the patient refused it.

A friend draws attention to this (apparently left-wing/libertarian) argument against assisted suicide and euthanasia. I’m not sure I see what’s left-wing or libertarian about it, but OK, it’s still early in the day, there’s still some hope for me. It’s not an uninteresting piece, except for this part, which made me jump out of my chair some:

But the problem arises when campaigners call upon society not only passively to accept that these acts of humanity take place, but actively to welcome them, to sanction them, even to celebrate them. Gosling and some of his supporters in the assisted suicide lobby say they want to bring these acts ‘into the open’, to raise awareness about them, and to encourage society to create new rules outlining when it is acceptable to help end someone’s life. But such acts do not belong ‘in the open’. If society were to legalise assisted suicide, it would send the very profound message that death is an acceptable solution to life’s trials and traumas. At a social level, it would elevate hopelessness and fatalism above the cultural affirmation of living, loving, fighting for another day, week, month or year.

Not sure on which planet this fellow lives, but down here it so happens that death has already been declared an acceptable solution to life’s trials and traumas.