Easing euthanasia restrictions will erode safeguards

By Letter to the Editor on March 4, 2020.

Re: “Assisted dying bill gets mixed reviews, raises fears of more restrictions,” Feb. 26.

The “experts,” Jocelyn Downie, James S. Palmer, Chair in Public Policy and Law at Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, and Stephanie Green of Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers, clearly cannot be happy with the number so far of 13,000 physically sick, vulnerable men and women who have been killed by euthanasia in Canada in just four short years.

Jocelyn is “floored” that the recently tabled Bill C7 does not allow for mentally ill people to be killed, as well. It’s “discriminatory, it’s stigmatizing,” she whines. She can relax, because as she most likely knows and as she is working diligently for, euthanasia for mentally ill persons will be made legal in Canada soon. In a few months, a Parliamentary committee will be looking at the possibility of euthanizing mentally ill persons, adolescents and children, and adults who cannot consent, but have made an advance request to be euthanized.

Joc and Steph et al have a false understanding of autonomy, as did all the Supreme Court judges who legalized the state-sanctioned killing of vulnerable people in the first place. This false understanding of autonomy, among other things, “contradicts the communal dimension of human existence, and leads to the erosion of all restrictions and “safeguards” regarding assisted suicide and euthanasia,” as is evidenced by Bill C-7.

There is a profound darkness behind the likes of those involved in the euthanasia mutiny. What do they get out of their hell-bent advocacy for the killing of weak and despondent people? One is reminded of the words in “Les Miserables,” by Victor Hugo: “The cruel of heart have their own black happiness.”

#reversetheMAIDlaw

Maureen Remus

Coaldale