MAiD
Canadian pro-life groups hold rally on Parliament Hill to protest euthanasia for mental illness
From LifeSiteNews
‘The implementation of euthanasia for the mentally ill must not simply be delayed for three years, it must be entirely stopped,’ Campaign Life Coalition national president Jeff Gunnarson said.
A number of top pro-life groups, including Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), held a rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa Tuesday to call for protection of the mentally ill from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s euthanasia regime.
On February 27, CLC joined Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPC) and Quebec Life Coalition along with other legal and medical experts to demand that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau permanently pause the expansion of MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) to the mentally ill.
“While we accept this delay, the fact is that euthanasia solely on the grounds of mental illness should never have been legally permitted in the first place,” said CLC national president Jeff Gunnarson in a press release. “Those suffering from mental illness need compassionate care, not killing.”
We co-hosted a rally today on Parliament Hill. It was about protecting the mentally ill from MAiD. Thanks to all who participated.
View entire rally with all speakers here: https://t.co/KGmfVzGV8Z@EuthanasiaPC @ARPACanada @CQV_QLC pic.twitter.com/o1jXUU2mj5— Campaign Life Coalition (@CampaignLife) February 28, 2024
“The implementation of euthanasia for the mentally ill must not simply be delayed for three years, it must be entirely stopped,” he added.
During the rally, Dr. Paul Saba urged Canadians to oppose MAiD, arguing “we should be providing better care and not be killing the disabled.”
Similarly, human rights lawyer Garifalia Milousis condemned the MAiD laws, revealing that she was “here today because thankfully in my moment of suffering no one came to me and said ‘maybe assisted suicide is the solution.’”
Milousis warned that if the MAiD laws are expanded, “someone like myself in a moment of deep despair and depression and psychological suffering” would be told there is no hope for them and death is the only solution.
“Instead of us coming alongside those individuals and saying that there is hope; there is meaning, and there is purpose to their lives,” she said “We’re instead going to say ‘maybe depression is right; maybe there isn’t any hope for you anymore.’”
“My hope and prayer is that our government will change course and will hear the voices of Canadian like myself and many others here today who say that we want to live in a world that says even a life with suffering is one worth living,” Milousis declared.
In January, after a lot of pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delayed its planned expansion of MAiD to those suffering solely from mental illness from March of this year until 2027.
Shortly after, Liberal Health Minister Mark Holland announced the Trudeau government still intends to expand euthanasia to mentally ill Canadians, despite provincial health ministers requesting the measure be “indefinitely” postponed.
The provision, if and when it is implemented, will relax legislation around so-called MAiD to include those suffering solely from mental illness. This is a result of the 2021 passage of Bill C-7, which allowed the chronically ill – not just the terminally ill – to qualify for so-called doctor-assisted death.
However, many experts have warned against the MAiD expansion, including leading Canadian psychiatrist Dr. K. Sonu Gaind, who testified that the expansion of MAiD “is not so much a slippery slope as a runaway train.”
Similarly, in November, several Canadian psychiatrists warned that the country is “not ready” for the coming expansion of euthanasia to those who are mentally ill. They said that further liberalizing the procedure is not something that “society should be doing” as it could lead to deaths under a “false pretense.”
The expansion of euthanasia to those with mental illness even has the far-left New Democratic Party (NDP) concerned. Dismissing these concerns, a Trudeau Foundation fellow actually said Trudeau’s current euthanasia regime is marked by “privilege,” assuring the Canadian people that most of those being put to death are “white,” “well off,” and “highly educated.”
The most recent reports show that MAiD is the sixth highest cause of death. However, it was not listed as such in Statistics Canada’s top 10 leading causes of death from 2019 to 2022. When asked why MAiD was left off the list, the agency explained that it records the illnesses that led Canadians to choose to end their lives via euthanasia, not the actual cause of death, as the primary cause of death.
According to Health Canada, in 2022, 13,241 Canadians died by MAiD lethal injections. This accounts for 4.1 percent of all deaths in the country for that year, a 31.2 percent increase from 2021.
While the numbers for 2023 have yet to be released, all indications point to a situation even more grim than 2022.
Daily Caller
‘Dark Day’: Another Western Country Backs Doctor-Assisted Suicide, Opens Door To ‘Murder Of Old And Sick’
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Katelynn Richardson
Oxford ethicist Dr. Calum Miller wrote on X the vote was a “huge step towards state-assisted and doctor-assisted murder of old and sick people” in the UK.
The British parliament backed a bill Friday that would legalize assisted suicide.
Following hours of debate, the United Kingdom’s House of Commons voted 330 to 275 in favor of a law that allows citizens with less than six months to live to end their own lives, according to several reports.
The “Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life)” bill must still pass through parliamentary committees and the UK’s House of Lords to become law, according to CNN. Kim Leadbeater, the lawmaker who introduced the bill, expects this to take an additional six months, according to Reuters.
Oxford ethicist Dr. Calum Miller wrote on X the vote was a “huge step towards state-assisted and doctor-assisted murder of old and sick people” in the UK.
“A truly dark day,” he wrote.
Currently, assisted suicide is illegal in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Friday’s vote puts the UK on track to join the handful of other countries that legalize assisted suicide, including Canada, Austrailia and New Zealand. Ten U.S. states, along with Washington, D.C., also permit assisted suicide.
Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) program is now the fifth leading cause of death in the country, with 13,241 people choosing assisted suicide in 2022 alone.
“Almost no MAiD requests are denied by clinicians, and the median time between written request and death from MAiD in 2022 was merely eleven days,” Ethics and Public Policy Center visiting fellow Alexander Raikin wrote in an August report.
In October, a committee reviewing MAiD deaths in Canada found multiple instances of patients seeking assisted suicide for reasons like fears of homelessness or isolation, according to the Associated Press.
During debate Friday, British lawmaker Robert Jenrick said the bill would create “imperceptible changes in behaviors.”
“There will be the grandmother who worries about her grandchildren’s’ inheritance if she does not end her life,” said Jenrick. “There will be the widow who relies on the kindness of strangers, who worries; it preys on her conscience. There will be people who are (and we all know them in our lives) shy, who have low self-esteem, who have demons within them.”
Another parliament member Danny Kruger pointed out that the definition of terminal illness in the bill does not provide safeguards.
“In the case of eating disorders, you just need to refuse food, and the evidence is in jurisdictions around the world… that that would be enough to qualify you for an assisted death,” he said.
Kruger said he has met assisted death specialists in Canada who “personally kill hundreds of patients a year.”
International
‘Wrong in principle’: Former UK prime ministers torch proposed assisted suicide legislation
A nurse injects medicine for euthanasia to an elderly man in a hospital bed
From LifeSiteNews
As UK lawmakers prepare to vote on Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill, opposition mounts from ex-prime ministers, clergy, and healthcare leaders, who condemn the practice ‘in principle’ while warning of risks to vulnerable patients and flawed safeguards.
At least four former U.K. prime ministers have opposed Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide bill as the Friday vote looms.
Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown published his editorial opposing assisted suicide in the Guardian on November 22, revealing that the moments he and his wife spent with their dying infant daughter were among the most precious in his life and calling on Parliament to instead focus on improving end-of-life care.
According to the Daily Telegraph, former British leaders Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Baroness Theresa May have all expressed their opposition to the deceitfully named Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. May’s opposition to assisted suicide has not changed since she voted against it in 2015, and thus she expects to vote against the Leadbeater bill if it progresses to the House of Lords, according to sources close to May.
Liz Truss has been forthright in her opposition, telling the Telegraph that she is “completely opposed” to assisted suicide: “It is wrong in principle: organs of the state like the NHS and the judicial system should be protecting lives, not ending them.” Boris Johnson also opposes the assisted suicide bill in its current form, the Telegraph reports. Rishi Sunak is not opposed to assisted suicide “in principle,” but has not stated which way he will be voting; Tony Blair has also thus far remained silent.
Unfortunately, former prime minister David Cameron has changed his view on assisted suicide, stating that despite his previous concerns that vulnerable people might be pressured to end their lives, Leadbeater’s bill has “strong safeguards.” As several experts have already pointed out, Cameron is wrong about the bill – in fact, the legislation as written is vague, disastrous, and filled with loopholes.
Indeed, the bill’s sponsor and most aggressive champion, Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, has suggested that fear of being a burden is a “legitimate reason” for dying – and the “safeguards,” such as Clause 25, which protects medical professionals involved in assisted suicides from civil liability, reveals who the safeguards are actually for.
Although the assisted suicide camp still has more confirmed votes, opposition to the bill has been mounting in recent days. The Times condemned the bill, stating in no uncertain terms:
Legislation sanctioning the killing of human beings, irrespective of life expectancy, is a matter worthy of the most rigorous debate. Ms Leadbeater implied only this week that doctors would be allowed to raise the issue of assisted dying with patients who had expressed no desire for it. Such flippant and ad hoc reasoning behind this most important of bills condemns it.
Even the Church of England has stepped up, with over 1,000 members of the Anglican clergy – including 15 bishops – signing an open letter stating:
To reduce the value of human life to physical and mental capacity and wellbeing has sinister implications for how we as a society view those who experience severe physical or mental issues.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols and other prominent Catholic clergy have also been vociferous in their condemnation of the bill; Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis published his opposition to the bill on November 26.
READ: Euthanasia advocates use deception to affect public’s perception of assisted suicide
These religious leaders are joined by jurists such as former judge Sir James Munby and former attorney Dominic Grieve. Additionally, 3,400 healthcare professionals, including 23 hospice medical directors and 53 eminent medical professionals, signed a letter stating that Leadbeater’s bill “would threaten society’s ability to safeguard vulnerable patients from abuse.” London Mayor Sadiq Khan also opposes the bill.
In response, suicide lobby group Dying With Dignity is pouring money into ad campaigns on social media, running 602 Facebook ads in the past month. Supporters of assisted suicide are claiming that a majority of the public supports the bill, and some polls indicate that over 60 percent do. However, as the saying goes, polls are taken to shape public opinion, not gauge it. From the Daily Mail:
[A new poll] found that when presented with ten basic arguments against assisted suicide – based on experiences from other countries such as Canada where the practice is allowed – support collapses. In this case the proportion of “supporters” who did not switch to oppose or say “don’t know” fell to just 11 per cent, the polling found. Support fell in every social category by between 17 and 49 percentage points.
This poll reveals precisely why Keir Starmer, the U.K.’s first openly atheist prime minister, permitted such an important bill to be so rushed: the more people know, the more they oppose assisted suicide. Let’s hope that the pushback is enough to carry the day.
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