“I want to die with dignity.”
As an extension of our series on euthanasia and assisted suicide, we’re diving into COLF’s “quick answers to common arguments” document. Here’s argument number two.
“I want to die with dignity.”
There is nothing dignified about swallowing a pill or getting a needle that will ensure a quick death. Euthanasia does not restore dignity; it eliminates the sometimes lonely and guilt ridden person in a way which is not always as painless as people would like to think.
I’m not so sure about questioning the painlessness (though that’s a legitimate practical concern), but the key in this response is that euthanasia does not restore dignity.
This is a deep question: Where do we derive our dignity from?
Why do we fear losing it in an end of life situation? I think the problem is that people feel that a lack of control or a loss of some certain abilities deprive us of our dignity. How could seeking death possibly heal that? I think that the real problem is that we’re looking for dignity and self-worth from the wrong sources. Our dignity doesn’t come from how able we are, or from what we are; it comes from who we are. The deeper problem is a culture that has a false basis for dignity and value.
Euthanasia is an escape from the challenge of discovering the true basis of our dignity, not a solution.
Dignity is not determined by physical or mental health, by autonomy or by usefulness to society. Human dignity is founded on the inherent worth of each human person, which can never be taken away by external factors or circumstances. The simple fact of being human gives us a dignity which no other
living beings possess.
Hey, what do you know? I wrote my comments on the first point before reading the second…
Palliative care provides a dignified death by giving patients the pain management and the social, emotion and spiritual support they require to live a good death with courage. Giving this support, of course, takes time and perseverance
And there’s the practical response — there’s a better way.
We are relational beings capable of loving and caring for others. Our sense of dignity is inextricably tied to the respect that we have for each other as human beings. If people feel they are loosing their dignity, it is our responsibility to make them feel valued again. How do they see themselves in our eyes? We all have the power to respond with friendship, love and solidarity to the illness of others in order to uphold and protect their “right to life” until the moment of natural death. We need each other in death as we need each other in life.
Absolutely. If someone feels undignified, the compassionate response is to restore their sense of dignity, to treat them with respect. Killing someone in response to a loss of a sense of dignity is a cop out, and it doesn’t restore anyone’s dignity — it eliminates the person in question so that we don’t have to make them feel valued again. We need to be there for those who are suffering. Providing a suffering person with death is not an adequate response to their real need to feel loved.
Previous posts in this series:
- “It’s my life, my death, my freedom, my choice, my right!”
- Alex Schadenberg at U of T
- Canadian Physicians for Life Educates Pro-Life Medical Students
- Euthanasia Bill Shut Down In South Australia
- Man trapped in 23-year “coma” misdiagnosed
- Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Why Not?
- Euthanasia is not appropriate care
10 years since GAP display vandalized at UBC
It’s been 10 years since the first GAP display in Canada, at the University of British Columbia, which was vandalized, (via Big Blue Wave). I didn’t realize that was the first GAP display, nor that it was 10 years ago, but I remember seeing the video when preparing for GAP at UofT a few years ago.
The CBC on McGill’s Pro-Life Club’s Status Being Suspended
The CBC provides coverage of the suspension of Choose Life (pro-life group at McGill) by the Student Society of McGill University (apparently there’s a video too, but it won’t play for me).
McGill student society president Ivan Neilson says the student council does not take a stance on abortion, but Choose Life’s actions were unacceptable.
“We’ve received several complaints from our students that they felt harassed, that they felt that their safety has come into question and that they felt personally attacked,” he told CBC News. “There are [also] several pamphlets that contain questionable statistics from questionable sources” left at various points on campus, Neilson said[...]
“The hope is that we can encourage actions or tactics on their part which promote respect for all of our [student] members,” Neilson said.
Theresa Gilbert from NLCN highlights some of the golden comments:
This story is best summarized by commenter vox veritas who wrote:
So, on one hand we have some people who FELT harassed, FELT that their safety had come into question and FELT personally attacked. On the other we have a group of people who were ACTUALLY harassed and personally attacked by pro-choice shock troops. Who does council side with? The feelers.
Very true indeed. The story makes an accusation that the people “felt harassed” but were they actually harassed? And if so how? On what occasion? By whom? The story is silent on this point. As for the pro-life club – they were indeed actually harassed… remember these YouTube videos?
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=McGill+Choose+Life&search_type=&aq=f
And who got punished again?
Silly pro-lifers. The SSMU is above the law. And if they aren’t going to protect students from scary words, who will? Whatever shall they do? Someone needs to sing children’s songs to protect their delicate ears!
I’m including the video again because it never gets old. These are the people in charge at the SSMU.
“It’s my life, my death, my freedom, my choice, my right!”
As an extension of last week’s series on euthanasia and assisted suicide, we’ll be diving into COLF’s “quick answers to common arguments” document. This is the first argument.
“It’s my life, my death, my freedom, my choice, my right!”
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are not private matters. These acts involve third parties such as physicians, pharmacists, family and friends who then have to carry the guilt of having killed another human being.
As with the abortion debate, we see proponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide falsely promoting the idea that this is a private matter. Like abortion, when tax payer dollars are going to fund it, the matter is placed firmly in the public square.
For many vulnerable citizens, legalizing euthanasia would only provide the illusion of choice – choice as a lie. Given the reality of Canada’s aging population and growing healthcare costs, they might be forced to accept euthanasia in order to avoid financial strain on the healthcare system. Their so-called “right to die” might soon become a “duty to die”.
As Barbara Kay explained over the summer, Legalized euthanasia empowers no one.
Changing Canadian law to allow euthanasia would have a profound effect on many vulnerable people. Even if euthanasia respects the autonomy of some, it endangers the lives of many others including persons with disabilities, the elderly, and those struggling with depression or severe illness. Such a law would be a guaranteed recipe for abuse of the vulnerable; it would be incapable of protecting them from coercion by family members and others.
This is an inevitable result of considering “death” to be appropriate “care.”
No one is an island. My choices and decisions have an impact on others and on society as a whole. My freedom and my rights have limits; they must respect the freedom and rights of other people. Personal freedom, self-determination and individual rights are not absolutes. They can be overridden to protect other values in society (for example to protect the rights of vulnerable citizens and the common good).
This strikes me as an important but more challenging argument to make. I haven’t participated in enough debates or discussions around euthanasia and assisted suicide to know how right-to-die proponents would react… but certainly worthy of discussion.
Previous posts in this series:
U of T Family Care Office Best Among Canadian Universities
Genevieve Bonomi, a summer research intern at the de Veber Institute for Bioethics and Social Research, put together a Report on Resources for Pregnant Women, Single Mothers and Parenting Students at university campuses in Canada.
The deVeber Institute of Bioethics and Social Research compiled a survey that consisted of six categories: education, housing, child care, health care, child-friendly campus and financial aid. This survey was completed for each of the 86 registered Canadian universities and each university was asked the same questions. This is what we found.
[Full disclosure: I've been doing some website work for the deVeber Institute, but I'm not involved with any of the research they're doing.]
As The Catholic Register reports, the University of Toronto was found to be the most child-friendly campus:
“The University of Toronto was the best in the country because they basically had every resource we questioned about and they also went above and beyond,” said Genevieve Bonomi, a student at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., who spent her summer calling every university to enquire about services[...]
Bonomi wanted to find out whether or not campuses offered any of the following: flexible class times or long-distance education, child care centres or child care referral services, housing or financial aid specifically for parenting students, health care centres on campus for pregnancy testing or counselling. She and other interns also looked at the overall child friendliness of the campuses — whether or not there were baby change tables and if buildings were accessible for strollers.
The University of Toronto met all of these criteria, Bonomi said, and she was surprised to discover it has an adoption agency associated with the university for faculty, staff and students, offered women places on campus to breastfeed, provided on-campus housing for parenting students with a priority for single parents, offered discounts for the several child care centres and subsidies as well as food and clothing banks for parenting students.
“It was just phenomenal the amount of encouragement that they’re providing for people to achieve an education and also have a family,” she said.
The U of T was the only university that offered information centrally, through the Family Centre and its web site.
“The point of the survey was to show that universities need a central point to help people find these resources on campus,” Bonomi said, adding it soon became clear that at many of the universities these resources didn’t event exist or staff didn’t know which department to direct her to.
Praise for U of T from Bonomi actually came back in July, but it’s being repeated now as the full report is released.
If you haven’t already, check out the Family Care Office website!
Alex Schadenberg at U of T
Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, delivered a lecture at the University of Toronto last week, so we’ve been focusing on the topics he covered in our series on euthanasia and assisted suicide.
We’ve uploaded video from Alex Schadenberg’s talk at U of T to our new YouTube channel. I can’t embed the playlist here, so I’ll just embed all 10 parts (though, if you use the playlist, it should play them one after another automatically). I’ve also included some rough point form notes that I took, in case you’re looking to skim rather than watch the whole thing.
What struck me as one of the most important themes in his talk was to clear up confusion over what euthanasia is and what it isn’t. Euthanasia is about the direct and intentional cause of death, about killing people. It’s not euthanasia to kill pain. That is, an unintentional overdose of a pain killer is similar to death on a surgeon’s table; assuming that the proper precautions are being taken, death is an unintended accident of trying to provide care for the patient. That’s not euthanasia.
Also, every patient has a right to refuse treatment. That’s not euthanasia either. (Though, a right to refuse treatment doesn’t mean that it’s okay for medical practitioners to remove basic care, like food and water.) Many people don’t understand what euthanasia is and mistake it for the refusal of treatment. We need to be clear that patients have a right to refuse treatment, but that euthanasia is about giving medical practitioners the power to directly and intentionally cause the death of another person by means of something like a lethal injection.
Anyways, you can hear the whole talk (and the Q&A) in Alex’s own words.
My notes:
- So many people confuse the refusal of treatment with euthanasia
- definitions are everything, so much ambiguity
- there’s a difference between withholding treatment and care
- it’s not about the unintentional overdose (too much pain killers), it’s similar to death on a surgeon’s table — it’s about direct and intentional cause of death
- it’s not euthanasia to kill pain
- abuse of pain management is a serious issue however, but euthanasia proponents are trying to create confusion
- are they saying that the abuse is okay?
- Euthanasia by omission: withdrawal of basic medical care with the direct and intentional cause of death of a person who is not otherwise dying
- this is different than accepting the limits of life and withdrawing hydration and nutrition from a person who is dying and nearing death / actively dying
- Jocelyn Downie says that there’s no difference between killing and letting die
- It’s not about “choice;” it’s about the rules a physician needs to follow to bring about the death of a patient
- Bill C-384: it’s not about choice or autonomy
- amends section 222 and section 241 of the criminal code, about euthanasia and assisted suicide
- the homicide provision
- do we really want to create exceptions to homicide?
- Schadenberg calls the clauses “ink on paper” — just trying to pretend that there are safeguards
- “you must have either tried or expressly refused appropriate treatments”
- “or terminally ill”
- insulin dependent diabetic who may be depressed
- “appears to be lucid”
- she included people undergoing mental pain…
- doesn’t define terminal illness
- Schadenberg died over 2 years after he was told he had 6 months to live
- he would have been eligible for euthanasia at the point of shock when he was first diagnosed
- does not require a witness at the time of death
- does not restrict death tourism
- what does any of this have to do with autonomy or choice?
- it’s about giving the power to medical practitioners to be directly and intentionally causing the death of another person by lethal injection
- it’s a threat to the lives of people with disabilities or other vulnerable people
- Tracy Latimer
- people only heard about her inabilities, not her abilities
- she went to school everyday by bus, her educational assistant said that she was a happy child who was not suffering
- she had a radio attached to her wheelchair that she turned on and off on her own
- yet, she had such a low quality of life that she was better off dead
- the perception about disability means that to be disabled means that you’re always suffering
- Groningen Protocol for the euthanasia of severely ill newborns in the Netherlands
- infant must have a certain diagnosis and prognosis
- BUT spina bifida is a condition that is very treatable, and for the most part people have a good prognosis
- infant must have a hopeless and unbearable suffering
- well, if you’re not going to give them pain management or palliative care as you kill them…
- must have second doctor
- when did physicians become the moral arbiters of our culture?
- must be carried out in accordance with the accepted medical standard
- since when was infanticide accepted medical practice?
- after the fact reporting
- and the doctor who euthanized the patient writes the report
- not a safeguard
- how can you say at birth that a child’s life will be “wretched in the extreme
- Schadenberg thinks the protocol exists to end the lives of infants with disabilities because the cost to society and to the parents is deemed too great to allow their lives to continue
- Van der Lee (pro-euthanasia): clinical impression was that requests for euthanasia were base don well-considered decisions… but she finds the opposite was true!
- also, Linda Ganzini’s study found that 15 of 58 people who’d requested assisted suicide were depressed, and none of the 49 people who died by assisted suicide in 2007 were offered a psychological assessment
- Van der lee was asked to comment on the article, said that it matched her findings, but her response was… who cares? (Schadenberg: I guess they appear to be lucid)
- Nadia, 18 year old student at Carlton, met someone online who convinced her to commit suicide
- William Melchert-Dinkel setup a suicide pact with her… he wanted her to hang herself in front of the webcam… he had no intention of committing suicide himself
- He’s now been tied to at least 5 suicides
- If Bill C-384 passes, could you protect someone from someone like Melchert-Dinkel?
- The law isn’t designed to restrict you, but to protect vulnerable people (the assisted suicide law)
- Need clear themes
- not medical treatment
- lethal injection
- need to work in coalitions
- messages
- choice is a lie
- euthanasia and assisted suicide have nothing to do with autonomy
- euthanasia and assisted suicide are the direct and intentional killing of people
- we need narratives, personal stories
- turning the tide http://www.saltandlighttv.org/prog_special_ttt.html
morphine is not a good killer, so intent makes a big difference (dose for pain would be quite different from dose to kill)
letting die versus killing
- still has ethical questions, but it wouldn’t be euthanasia
Previous posts in this series:
Canadian Physicians for Life educates pro-life medical students
This is the fifth post in our series on euthanasia and assisted suicide. Thanks to Alex Schadenberg for coming to speak to our campus this week!
The Catholic Register reports on the Canadian Physicians for Life’s sixth annual medical student form, which took place last week in Calgary.
“The medical students are going to be the ones to make the decisions in the future, aren’t they, so it’s very important for them to understand what they’re dealing with,” [Margaret Somerville] told The Catholic Register.
Somerville said many doctors in Quebec who responded to a survey about whether or not euthanasia was wrong do not understand what it is. Many indicated that euthanasia was synonymous with palliative sedation and adequate pain relief.
“The public is being lulled into the idea that all doctors think it’s OK but of course if you think it’s just palliative sedation or pain relief when it’s needed then of course you don’t think it’s a problem,” she said. “What we should be talking about is doctors being allowed to kill their patients.”
As a professor, she said, the idea of having to stand up in front of medical school students to teach them how to properly kill their patients is horrendous.
“I mean, if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to teach them to do it competently,” she said, citing an example in the Netherlands where a patient who survived a lethal injection then sued his doctor for malpractice. In the Netherlands, doctors can administer lethal injections to patients who are depressed and wish to die.
[...]
“This is the most important thing, which is to educate and support medical pro-life students so they can carry on the presence of a strong life ethic within the medical profession which is so easily hijacked by an amoral technocratic mindset.” [said Will Johnston, president of Canadian Physicians for Life and a family physician in Vancouver]
One of the presentations will revolve around how to create medical pro-life groups on campus. Johnston said these are very important because they allow students to have the direct support of colleagues.
If you’re a pro-life medical student at the University of Toronto, we want to hear from you!
Previous posts in this series:
Euthanasia Bill Shut Down In South Australia
This is the fourth post in our series about euthanasia and assisted suicide. Keep an eye out for a report on Alex Schadenberg’s talk from last night.
LifeSiteNews.com reports that a bill to legalize euthanasia in South Australia was unexpectedly defeated last week:
In a surprise victory for pro-life advocates, South Australia’s Upper House has narrowly voted down an amendment to their palliative care legislation that would have legalized euthanasia.
The bill was proposed by Greens member Mark Parnell. It was expected to pass 11-10, with the support of independent member Ann Bressington, the swing vote. Bressington opted to abstain, however, after amendments she had sought failed. This abstention would have resulted in a tie, meaning that Upper House President Bob Sneath would vote to pass the bill.
In the end, however, member David Ridway announced to the shock of pro-life observers that personal reasons had led him to change his mind, and he voted against the bill.
Parnell has stated his intention to make another attempt at legalizing euthanasia after the state elections in March 2010. With the upcoming retirement of two pro-life members, pro-life advocates have indicated that such an attempt has a real risk of succeeding.
This is a reminder that we must remain vigilant. Bill C-384 doesn’t seem to have enough support to pass in Canada, but we need to keep the pressure on against it and do our best to educate the public in response to confusion about euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Previous posts in this series:
Man trapped in 23-year “coma” misdiagnosed
Reminder: come see Alex Schadenberg, executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coaltion, speak in the SMC Senior Common Room tonight at 6pm! This is the third post in our series about euthanasia and assisted suicide this week, surrounding his talk.
Horrific barely begins to describe what Rom Houben went through (via Mathew Ingram):
A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time[...]
‘I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,’ said Mr [Rom] Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegatative state[...]
Doctors used a range of coma tests before reluctantly concluding that his consciousness was ‘extinct’.
But three years ago, new hi-tech scans showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally[...]
Therapy has since allowed him to tap out messages on a computer screen.
Mr Houben said: ‘All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.’
His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who ’saved’ him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys.
‘Medical advances caught up with him,’ said Dr Laureys, who believes there may be many similar cases of false comas around the world.
The disclosure will also renew the right-to-die debate over whether people in comas are truly unconscious[...]
Mr Houben said: ‘I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me – it was my second birth.
‘I want to read, talk with my friends via the computer and enjoy my life now that people know I am not dead.’
Dr Laureys’s new study claims that patients classed as in a vegetative state are often misdiagnosed.
‘Anyone who bears the stamp of “unconscious” just one time hardly ever gets rid of it again,’ he said[...]
Dr Laureys said: ‘In Germany alone each year some 100,000 people suffer from severe traumatic brain injury[...]
‘An estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people a year remain trapped in an intermediate stage – they go on living without ever coming back again.’
Supporters of euthanasia and assisted suicide argue that people who have lain in persistent vegetative states for years should be given the opportunity to have crucial medical support withdrawn because of the ‘indignity’ of their condition.
But there have been several cases in which people judged to be in vegetative states or deep comas have recovered.
Twenty years ago, Carrie Coons, an 86-year-old from New York, regained consciousness after a year, took small amounts of food by mouth and engaged in conversation.
Only days before her recovery, a judge had granted her family’s request for the removal of the feeding tube which had been keeping her alive.
As medical technology improves, it serves to highlight the falsehood in labeling people as “vegetables” so that we might rationalize killing them instead of caring for them. Once again, advances in medical technology reinforce the pro-life position and affirm the humanity of vulnerable people.
Previous posts in this series:
Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Why Not?
This is the second post in our series on euthanasia and assisted suicide. Come see Alex Schadenberg speak at UofT tomorrow at 6pm in the SMC Senior Common Room for the highlight event.
The Catholic Organization for Life and Family has released a downloadable PDF booklet: Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Why Not? As the Catholic Register explains, “the booklet lists 12 common arguments in the pro-euthanasia mindset, then sets out to obliterate them with concise, bullet-like points based on natural law.”
The arguments seem fairly focused on reason — non-Catholics should be encouraged to read it as well.
The booklet is free to copy and distribute, so I’m going to dive into each of the arguments over the next few weeks, beyond the scope of this week’s series. Today, we’ll start with the introduction:
According to some surveys, three-quarters of Canadians would favour the legalization of euthanasia. Above all, they fear one day becoming a burden and having their lives unduly prolonged in suffering.
Given the immense confusion surrounding euthanasia, it is reasonable to question these statistics and some unreliable surveys. It is more than likely that the majority of citizens would change their minds if they were properly informed.
However, a very effective lobby is manipulating words and emotions in order to promote euthanasia and assisted suicide. For example, some erroneously use the phrase “passive euthanasia” to describe the withdrawal of futile medical treatment.
The need to dispel confusion by returning words to their true meaning has become
urgent. It is also important to recognize euphemisms for “euthanasia” and “assisted suicide”: voluntary interruption of life… active aide in dying… hastened death… physician assisted death…To begin with, it is important to clarify the distinction between euthanasia and the refusal of aggressive treatment (see Quick Answer no. 3). When death is imminent and inevitable, it is perfectly legitimate to refuse medical procedures which are disproportionate to the desired results or too burdensome for the patient and his or her family.
But what is euthanasia? Euthanasia is the intentional killing of someone, with or without his or her consent, either by act or omission. By killing the person, one seeks to eliminate all aspects of that person’s life including the pain, suffering or humiliation of being in need of help. The person who commits euthanasia must intend, for whatever reason, to kill the other and must cause his or her death.
In the case of assisted suicide, a person kills himself or herself with the help of another person who provides him or her with the means to carry out the act.
[...]
The “quick answers” presented here provide appropriate responses to common
arguments put forward by proponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Check out the booklet [PDF] or stay tuned to our blog!
Authors
Blaise Alleyne
Clarissa Luluquisin
All posts by Blaise Alleyne are licensed freely under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Canada 2.5 licence.
