When a doctor or nurse gives an injection to a patient with the intent to cause death they are not treating the patient, they are killing them. When one person kills another, it is homicide. It has been that way since Cain and Abel.
Killing someone is an offence in the Criminal Code, moral law and Church teaching. That can’t be changed by giving killing a new name. Legislators in the province of Quebec want to call euthanasia aid in dying and dress it up as health care. They want to make killing legal. It sends chills.
On June 12 Quebec’s National Assembly received Bill-52, “An Act respecting end-of-life care.” The bill has little to do with care; it’s all about euthanasia. It sets out conditions for doctors — and perhaps others — to deliver lethal doses of drugs to consenting patients.
Quebec bishops have reacted with justifiable alarm, warning the bill puts Canada at a critical crossroads.
“This is a very important moment for the history of our country, of our society,” said Rimouski Archbishop Pierre-Andre Fournier, president of the Quebec bishops’ assembly.
He is absolutely right. Bill-52 is not just another of those “slippery slopes” we hear about. It’s an Olympic bobsled run that will hurtle Canada into a future that further disrespects life and, in particular, places society’s most vulnerable at risk.
Bill-52 is offensive on many levels, as was pointed out last week in a Catholic Register column by Alex Schadenberg. As he put it, the bill is “rife with false claims, euphemisms and ambiguous language” that make the bill a frightening prospect.
Foremost, in an Orwellian perversion of language, the bill redefines palliative care to now encompass something dubbed “medical aid in dying” by “terminal sedation.” In other words, palliative care doctors will be forced to honour a patient’s request for lethal injection. If for reasons of faith or conscience they object to euthanasia, they will be required by law to refer their patient to someone who will do the deed.
Opening the door to euthanasia is an invitation to abuse. Who will protect the elderly who feel like a burden, the disabled who feel abandoned, the clinically depressed who have lost hope? What will stop euthanasia from becoming a solution for overcrowded hospitals and ever-rising health care costs, or a “treatment” option for any serious illness or disease? How long before there is a court challenge on the basis that, if some people can be euthanized, why not anyone?
Euthanasia is the opposite of health care and Bill-52 is dangerous legislation that has no place in a moral, caring society — to state the obvious.