Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada:

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Alex Schadenberg

Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

The New York Times published an opinion column by Ross Douthat on December 3, 2022 titled: What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada.

Douthat begins by writing about the pro-euthanasia ad by Simons, a Canadian fashion designer, and retailer. Douthat states:

In an interview quoted in Canada's National Post, the chief merchant of Simons stated that the film was "obviously not a commercial campaign." Instead, it was a signifier of a public-spirited desire to "build the communities that we want to live in tomorrow, and leave to our children." 

For those communities and children, the video’s message is clear: They should believe in the holiness of euthanasia.

In recent years, Canada has established some of the world’s most permissive euthanasia laws, allowing adults to seek either physician-assisted suicide or direct euthanasia for many different forms of serious suffering, not just terminal diseases. In 2021, over 10,000 people ended their lives this way, just over 3 percent of all deaths in Canada. A further expansion, allowing euthanasia for mental health conditions, will go into effect in March 2023; permitting euthanasia for “mature” minors is also being considered.

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has been urging its supporters to boycott Simons. 

Douthat asks the states that the advance of euthanasia presents a different question: What if a society remains liberal but ceases to be civilized? Douthat continues:

The rules of civilization necessarily include gray areas. It is not barbaric for the law to acknowledge hard choices in end-of-life care, about when to withdraw life support or how aggressively to manage agonizing pain.

It is barbaric, however, to establish a bureaucratic system that offers death as a reliable treatment for suffering and enlists the healing profession in delivering this “cure.” And while there may be worse evils ahead, this isn’t a slippery slope argument: When 10,000 people are availing themselves of your euthanasia system every year, you have already entered the dystopia.

Douthat then comments on the concept of euthanasia as a human right.

The idea that human rights encompass a right to self-destruction, the conceit that people in a state of terrible suffering and vulnerability are really “free” to make a choice that ends all choices, the idea that a healing profession should include death in its battery of treatments — these are inherently destructive ideas. Left unchecked, they will forge a cruel brave new world, a dehumanizing final chapter for the liberal story.

Douthat acknowledges that there are Liberals who oppose euthanasia but he suggests that a potent Conservatism is needed to prevent euthanasia from spreading. He writes:

Yes, there are liberals, Canadian and American, who can see what’s wrong with euthanasia. Yes, the most explicit cheerleading for quietus can still inspire backlash: Twitter reactions to the Simons video have been harsh, and it’s vanished from the company’s website.

But without a potent conservatism, the cultural balance tilts too much against these doubts.

Conservatism is not required to oppose euthanasia but we need to call it what it is. Calling euthanasia MAiD takes away the reality that euthanasia is an act of killing. You don't need to be religious or Conservative to oppose killing.

They wonder why we have a shortage of doctors in Canada

Well, this is probably why. As you know, doctors have lost their conscience rights! It's despicable how our Federal Government treats our doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals 

 https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/medically-assisted-death-canada-losing-maid-providers

Canada's expanding MAID program leading to a crisis in the supply of 'willing' doctors

The number of MAID deaths has grown from just over 1,000 in 2016, when assisted dying in Canada was formally legalized, to 31,644 in 2021

Sharon Kirkey

On Assisted Suicide and Perspective: A Practical Response - Stephanie Gray - February 11, 2015

 I just found this on my computer by Stephanie Gray

On Assisted Suicide and Perspective: A Practical Response

https://loveunleasheslife.com/blog/2015/2/11/on-assisted-suicide-and-perspective-a-practical-response-by-stephanie-gray

by Stephanie Gray (www.stephaniegray.info)

Last Friday as I flew to Texas to speak at a mother-daughter event, I stared out the airplane window at the majesty of the setting sun which had painted the sky red, yellow, orange, and blue in a breathtaking scene of beauty, and my mind wandered to a stark contrast: the turmoil going on back in my own country.  February 6 was a dark day for Canada, for it was the day our Supreme Court overturned the law prohibiting assisted suicide.

In between flights that day, I saw my newsfeed and e-mail filled with messages of deep sadness, fear, and dread.  These were, and are, healthy reactions to a horrifying decision that attacks the dignity of the person.

Now that the news has settled over the weekend, it is good to take a moment to reflect on the importance of perspective.  Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, reminds us of a truth we must cling to during these dark days: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”

The bad news is that the sick and vulnerable are in danger in Canada. The good news is that we are in control of our response to this horrible set of circumstances.  No judge or government or individual can take away how we respond.  So a question each one of us must ask is this: Are the sick and vulnerable, in my circle of influence, in danger?  Each of us determines the answer to that question.

Consider Lord of the Rings, a story revolving around a young hobbit, Frodo, who inherits the Ring of Power and who is charged with the grave responsibility of transporting it to a volcano to destroy it.  At one point, Frodo laments, “I wish the ring had never come to me.  I wish none of this had happened.”  And the wizard Gandalf, replies, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

That is perspective. And that is what we must continue to come back to in light of the Supreme Court’s decision.  While it is understandable that we lament, “I wish the court had never decided this. I wish euthanasia didn’t happen in Canada,” we should focus more on how we have the power to decide what to do with the time that is given to us, how we can choose our attitude in this present circumstance.

So what are we going to do with the time that is given to us?

I heartily recommend supporting worthy causes like The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. Then, when it comes to a practical level, I think our primary response to Friday’s decision should be to love more deeply, and influence more positively, the people around us.  If no one asks for assisted suicide, and if strong people protect weak people from medical personnel who would be tempted to kill the vulnerable, assisted suicide and euthanasia won’t happen. So what does that mean?  Each of us, in our particular circle of influence, should seek out those around us who we can 1) be a friend to and 2) be an advocate for.

Be a Friend

Many years ago, pro-life speaker Camille Pauley spoke about how she visited an elderly, unresponsive man in a hospital.  She spent time visiting him not for herself, but for him.  It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hold a conversation with her, because what mattered was that she communicated, by her time and presence and love, that he was valuable, that he was unrepeatable and irreplaceable, and that he had dignity by his very existence, not by anything he could do.  By simply “Being With” (the name of the program she developed for this very outreach), she affirmed his worth.  If someone is not made to feel like they are a burden, but instead made to feel that they are worthy of our time, they are unlikely to ask for assisted suicide.

Practically speaking, I think we all could do an inventory of our family and friends and think about one or two in our circle who most need special attention, and then be intentional about spending more time with them.  We could also seek out one or two people we don’t yet know that we will make time for.  I recently sent this message to my pastor and encourage others to copy and paste the same:

In light of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Canada's prohibition on assisted suicide, I believe one of the best ways we can respond to this horrible ruling is for everyone to make sure that the people in their circles of influence don't ever ask for assisted suicide--to make sure that everyone in our circles of influence feels loved and supported and cared for.  

So in asking, “What can I do?” it occurred to me that there could be someone at our church who is an elderly or disabled person who is shut in with no family or friends who could use some visits and help.  So I was wondering if you know of a parishioner like this who could be blessed by someone forming a friendship to spend time with them?  If so, could you please connect me to them?

Alternatively, signing up to visit at a local elderly home is another practical way to be present and loving to the vulnerable.

Be an Advocate

Besides being a friend, we also need to be an advocate. The dictionary defines this as “a person who speaks or writes in support or defense of a person.”  If one of your family or friends is hospitalized, are you equipped to ask the right questions and seek out the right information to ensure their medical treatment is handled in an ethical fashion?  Several years ago I took a certification course in healthcare ethics through the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) in Philadelphia. Thanks to NCBC’s resources, when my friend with a brain tumor was facing possible end-of-life issues, I was able to share their advice for ethical decision-making with his wife.  

Whether you know how to ethically handle end-of-life care (e.g., how does one determine whether an intervention is proportionate versus disproportionate?), or whether you know where to look for what is the right course of action, another important point for consideration is this: do you have the legal power to ensure the right thing is done for your loved ones?  Last night I confirmed that I have Power of Attorney for my parents should they ever be incapable of making medical decisions on their behalf. This was a legal document I signed several years ago and you can bet, should it ever need to be enforced, that I will make decisions on their behalf that respect their dignity. You can bet I will ensure doctors respond by alleviating suffering, not eliminating the sufferer.

If you are a health care professional, you can advocate for your patients by practicing ethically and not allowing the Supreme Court’s decision to cause you to do anything different except that it motivates you to be more loving, attentive, and compassionate, someone who exemplifies what it means to be a part of a healing profession.

When we are tempted to be overwhelmed by the gravity and far-reaching consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision, let us remember that we are in control of our response.  Rather than despairing or being overwhelmed, let us remember the words of Bishop Untener of Michigan who said, “We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.  This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.”

Be a friend.  Be an advocate.  Let us each do that very well.

The Pro Life Homily that Rocked the World

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/the-pro-life-homily-that-rocked-the-world-and-caused-3-priests-to-be-behead

Dr. Gerard M. Nadal
Note: H/T to Deacon Greg Kandra who posted this earlier this month on the 70th Anniversary of this Homily. This comes from historyplace.com which has an excellent repository of historical speeches and commentary. This homily, slightly reworded for current leaders is a commentary for our present age. For distributing copies of this homily, the Nazis beheaded three priests, but left the Cardinal alone for fear of making him a martyr. See the link for additional commentary before and after the homily. Now, the commentary and homily:

Commentary:

This is an excerpt of the sermon by Catholic Cardinal Clemens von Galen, delivered on Sunday, August 3, 1941, in Münster Cathedral, in which he risked his life by openly condemning the Nazi euthanasia program.

Code named “Aktion T4,” the Nazi program to eliminate “life unworthy of life” began on Hitler’s order in October 1939. The program at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three that showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.

A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire, without any examination and without reading any medical records.

Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or – mark in blue pencil under the term “treatment” on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant meant a decision against killing. Three +++ symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being issued and the transfer of the child to a ‘Children’s Specialty Department’ for death by injection or gradual starvation.

The decision had to be unanimous. In cases where the decision was not unanimous the child was kept under observation and another attempt would be made to get a unanimous decision.

The Nazi euthanasia program soon expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler granted “the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner, that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable, can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death.”

Questionnaires were then distributed to mental institutions, hospitals and other institutions caring for the chronically ill. A total of six killing centers were established including the well-known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. The euthanasia program was eventually headed by an SS officer named Christian Wirth, a notorious brute with the nickname ‘the Savage Christian.’

At Brandenburg, a former prison was converted into a killing center where the first experimental gassings took place. The gas chambers were disguised as shower rooms, but were actually hermetically sealed chambers connected by pipes to cylinders of carbon monoxide. Each killing center also had a crematorium where the bodies were taken for disposal. Families were then falsely informed the cause of death was medical such as heart failure or pneumonia.

Homily:

Fellow Christians! In the pastoral letter of the German bishops of June 26, 1941, which was read out in all the Catholic churches in Germany on July 6, 1941, it states among other things: It is true that there are definite commandments in Catholic moral doctrine which are no longer applicable if their fulfillment involves too many difficulties.

However, there are sacred obligations of conscience from which no one has the power to release us and which we must fulfill even if it costs us our lives. Never under any circumstances may a human being kill an innocent person apart from war and legitimate self-defense. On July 6, I already had cause to add to the pastoral letter the following explanation: for some months we have been hearing reports that, on the orders of Berlin, patients from mental asylums who have been ill for a long time and may appear incurable, are being compulsorily removed. Then, after a short time, the relatives are regularly informed that the corpse has been burnt and the ashes can be delivered. There is a general suspicion verging on certainty, that these numerous unexpected deaths of mentally ill people do not occur of themselves but are deliberately brought about, that the doctrine is being followed, according to which one may destroy so-called ‘worthless life,’ that is, kill innocent people if one considers that their lives are of no further value for the nation and the state.

I am reliably informed that lists are also being drawn up in the asylums of the province of Westphalia as well of those patients who are to be taken away as so-called ‘unproductive national comrades’ and shortly to be killed. The first transport left the Marienthal institution near Münster during this past week.

German men and women, section 211 of the Reich Penal Code is still valid. It states: ‘He who deliberately kills another person will be punished by death for murder if the killing is premeditated.’

Those patients who are destined to be killed are transported away from home to a distant asylum presumably in order to protect those who deliberately kill those poor people, members of our families, from this legal punishment. Some illness is then given as the cause of death. Since the corpse has been burnt straight away, the relatives and also the criminal police are unable to establish whether the illness really occurred and what the cause of death was.

However, I have been assured that the Reich Interior Ministry and the office of the Reich Doctors’ Leader, Dr. Conti, make no bones about the fact that in reality a large number of mentally ill people in Germany have been deliberately killed and more will be killed in the future.

The Penal Code lays down in section 139: ‘He who receives credible information concerning the intention to commit a crime against life and neglects to alert the authorities or the person who is threatened in time…will be punished.’

When I learned of the intention to transport patients from Marienthal in order to kill them, I brought a formal charge at the State Court in Münster and with the Police President in Münster by means of a registered letter which read as follows: “According to information which I have received, in the course of this week a large number of patients from the Marienthal Provincial Asylum near Münster are to be transported to the Eichberg asylum as so-called ‘unproductive national comrades’ and will then soon be deliberately killed, as is generally believed has occurred with such transports from other asylums. Since such an action is not only contrary to the moral laws of God and Nature but also is punishable with death as murder under section 211 of the Penal Code, I hereby bring a charge in accordance with my duty under section 139 of the Penal Code, and request you to provide immediate protection for the national comrades threatened in this way by taking action against those agencies who are intending their removal and murder, and that you inform me of the steps that have been taken.”

I have received no news concerning intervention by the Prosecutor’s Office or by the police…Thus we must assume that the poor helpless patients will soon be killed.

For what reason?

Not because they have committed a crime worthy of death. Not because they attacked their nurses or orderlies so that the latter had no other choice but to use legitimate force to defend their lives against their attackers. Those are cases where, in addition to the killing of an armed enemy in a just war, the use of force to the point of killing is allowed and is often required.

No, it is not for such reasons that these unfortunate patients must die but rather because, in the opinion of some department, on the testimony of some commission, they have become ‘worthless life’ because according to this testimony they are ‘unproductive national comrades.’ The argument goes: they can no longer produce commodities, they are like an old machine that no longer works, they are like an old horse which has become incurably lame, they are like a cow which no longer gives milk.

What does one do with such an old machine? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What does one do with a lame horse, with such an unproductive cow?

No, I do not want to continue the comparison to the end–however fearful the justification for it and the symbolic force of it are. We are not dealing with machines, horses and cows whose only function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for man. One may smash them, one may slaughter them as soon as they no longer fulfil this function.

No, we are dealing with human beings, our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters. With poor people, sick people, if you like unproductive people.

But have they for that reason forfeited the right to life?

Have you, have I the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognized by others as productive?

If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill ‘unproductive’ fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail! If one is allowed to kill the unproductive people then woe betide the invalids who have used up, sacrificed and lost their health and strength in the productive process. If one is allowed forcibly to remove one’s unproductive fellow human beings then woe betide loyal soldiers who return to the homeland seriously disabled, as cripples, as invalids. If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill ‘unproductive’ fellow humans–and even if initially it only affects the poor defenseless mentally ill–then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labor and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive.

Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other ‘unproductive’ people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the ‘unproductive,’ who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves.

Who will be able to trust his doctor any more?

He may report his patient as ‘unproductive’ and receive instructions to kill him. It is impossible to imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families if this dreadful doctrine is tolerated, accepted and followed.

Woe to mankind, woe to our German nation if God’s Holy Commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ which God proclaimed on Mount Sinai amidst thunder and lightning, which God our Creator inscribed in the conscience of mankind from the very beginning, is not only broken, but if this transgression is actually tolerated and permitted to go unpunished.

Cardinal Clemens von Galen – August 3, 1941

Rally opposing euthanasia & assisted suicide - Ottawa, Canada, June 1, 2016

The Rally which took place
on Parliament Hill, June 1, 2016
from noon to 1:30 
Ottawa, Canada 
was organized by
the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition,
Living with Dignity Network,
and the Physicians’ Alliance Against Euthanasia.

I videotaped the speeches
and took photos of some of the participants


VIDEOS

Aubert Martin Director, Vivre dans la Dignité -

Dr. Catherine Ferrier -
Physicians Alliance Against Euthanasia

Amy Hasbrouck, Director, Toujours Vivant

Senators
Betty Unger, Norman Doyle and Tobias Enverrga

 Paul Saba,  the Coalition of Physicians for Social Justice, 
and MP Harold Albrecht, Cyprus Hills–Grasslands

MP Bev Shipley, Lambton, Kent, Middlesex,
MP Garnet Genuis, Sherwood Park–Fort Saskatchewan,
MP Arnold Viersen, Peace River–Westlock,
and Barbara Dowding 
National President , Catholic Women`s League
Bishop Noel Simard Valleyfield

 

MP Brad Trost, Saskatoon,

Peter Vogul Deputy Leader of the Christian Heritage Party,

Nancy Elliott Chair person EPC USA

 

 

Video Footage of some of the participants

PHOTOS
 

Anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo

This Wednesday, March 31, marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo. Father Frank Pavone will be at Ave Maria in Naples, FL and will be the celebrant and homilist at the Annual National Mass for “Terri’s Day.” Please make “Terri’s Day” a day of prayer and remembrance for Terri and a day of prayer for all whose lives are threatened in the same way that hers was. for more information.
http://www.priestsforlife.org/terri/terris-day.htm