As an extension of our series on euthanasia and assisted suicide, we’re working our way through COLF’s “quick answers to common arguments” document. This is argument number three.

“Living is not an obligation. I don’t want to die hooked up to a bunch of machines or forced to stay alive when I know it’s time to pass on.”

There is no legal obligation to receive treatment in Canada. A competent patient or the proxy of an incompetent patient has the legal power to accept or refuse any treatment, or ask that it be discontinued.

Many people don’t understand what euthanasia is. The refusal of treatment is not euthanasia or assisted suicide. It’s the refusal of treatment. That’s a right we affirm; this argument misunderstands the pro-life position.

The withdrawal or withholding of extraordinary or disproportionate treatment, when its burdens outweigh its benefit, is not euthanasia because the intention is not to cause death but to allow the person to die naturally; in euthanasia the intention is to cause death – the patient does not die naturally but rather is killed by another human being before his or her time.

A means/ends/consequence breakdown is useful here. In euthanasia and assisted suicide, the goal may be to end a patient’s suffering, but a patient’s death is directly sought as the means of ending that suffering. Death is a desired consequence of the act. But when refusing treatment, death is an unintended foreseen consequence. The intent is to refuse treatment, to alleviate pain or undue burden, and the result is that the disease or natural ailment then takes its toll. The ailment causes death, not the act of any person.

It’s the difference between killing someone, and letting nature take its course.

When disproportionate treatment is withdrawn or withheld, the cause of death is the underlying disease or condition; in euthanasia the cause of death is the lethal injection, pill or other means used. There is a great difference between allowing to die and making die.

It’s good practice responding to these points before reading ahead…

Artificial nutrition and hydration are considered ordinary care – not treatment – and must, in principle, be given to the patient. Food and water are basic necessities of life which do not treat any specific condition. A person should never die because they have been deprived of nutrition and hydration. However in certain circumstances, such as near the end of life, the body may not be able to assimilate food and water or the procedures used can be too burdensome to continue. In these situations, artificial nutrition and hydration can be discontinued.

An important qualifier: starving someone to death is not the same thing as refusing treatment (but for exceptional circumstances near the end of life).

• “I want to die with dignity.”
• “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

Back in August, we covered Dr. Alveda King’s comments in the Washington Times:

Abortion and racism are evil twins, born of the same lie. Where racism now hides its face in public, abortion is accomplishing the goals of which racism only once dreamed. Together, abortionists are destroying humanity at large and the black community in particular.

Alveda King is Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece. I didn’t realize how active she was in the pro-life movement, but here’s a video from the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform in the U.S. where Dr. King tells her story and speaks out against abortion.

The latest report from the United Nations Population Fund says that children are the cause of climate change (via ProWomanProLife):

The latest report from the United Nations Population Fund was released on Wednesday at news conferences in Ottawa and other key venues where policy makers could be made aware of the news: more babies will undermine attempts to stop climate change.

Strangely, much of the news conference, like the material put out by the Population Fund, was taken up with detailing the ways the world’s leading population control agency works to combat maternal deaths and serious complications from childbirth, both admirable goals. Yet the crux of the report is that, while we need to save those who do give birth, we need fewer of them. In the eyes of the UNFPA, it is the babies of maternity wards present and future that are the culprits in climate change: “Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendants.“

Before world leaders head to Copenhagen to try and hammer out a deal on climate change, UNFPA wants them to consider population growth as a contributing factor to be dealt with. Its report says: “No human is genuinely ‘carbon neutral,’ especially when all greenhouse gases are figured into the equation. Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution in some way. The world’s Governments and peoples will need to work together on every aspect of the factors that increase greenhouse-gas emissions. One such factor is the earth’s growing population.”

Ok, can somebody help me here? If we aren’t saving the environment for our children… who exactly are we saving it for?

What does this have to do with abortion? Have a conversation on campus about abortion and see how long it takes for a pro-choicer to bring up the overpopulation argument (“there are too many people already,” “we have enough trouble feeding the world as it is…”). Though, at that point, I get stumped on a separate question: if killing people is a legitimate way to reduce the population… why limit ourselves to the unborn?

And on a slightly economic sidenote: is it really that hard to imagine that people can contribute to solving problems in the world, rather than just being a drain on resources? A baby is not just a “source of emissions…” *sigh*

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.

• “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

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 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.

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.

• 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

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, 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

• 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

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 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!

• 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