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MP who attempted suicide launches campaign against expanding euthanasia for mental illness

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

MP Andrew Lawton said he might be dead if a bill currently being debated in Canada to include mental illness as a condition for assisted suicide was the law when he tried to take his life.

A Conservative MP who almost died in a suicide attempt 15 years ago launched an initiative to help those struggling with mental illness choose life and to help stop a plan by the Canadian government to expand euthanasia to those with mental illness.

The initiative, led by newly elected Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Andrew Lawton and called ‘I Got Better’: Stop MAID for Mental Illness, was launched Thursday.

“Fifteen years ago, I almost lost my life to suicide. It wasn’t my first suicide attempt, but it was by far the most serious. I intentionally overdosed on several medications and ended up on life support and in a coma for several weeks. This wasn’t a cry for help. I wanted to die,” Lawson said in a video posted to X.

Lawson noted how the changes coming in 2027 to Canada’s euthanasia laws, or “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) – a euphemism for assisted suicide as it’s known — that someone like him experiencing what he suffered years ago “would be able to get a doctor to help them end their life.”

“Simply put, if the law on the books now were there 15 years ago, I’d probably be dead right now. What I went through didn’t happen overnight. Through much of my teenage years and into my early 20s, I battled severe depression. I would have good days and bad days, but I started to have more and more bad days,” he said.

Lawson observed how at a certain point in time he could not “take it anymore” and thus crafted a plan to end his life.

“This wasn’t a rash or impulsive decision. I scheduled it weeks out. Those closest to me had no idea what I was going through,” he said.

“I did have a support system I could have leaned on. I had plenty of opportunities to change my mind or seek help, but I didn’t. I was that committed. I was that stubborn. In my story and those of countless others, the desire to end my life was a symptom of my mental illness.”

Canada needs to protect vulnerable, says MP

LifeSiteNews reported on Bill C-218, noting that Jansen said allowing “medical assistance in dying” (MAiD) – a euphemism for assisted suicide – for those with mental illness is “not healthcare, that’s not compassion, it’s abandonment.”

“Mental illness is treatable. Recovery is possible, but only if we show up and help,” she told fellow MPs.

Jansen’s Bill C-218 reads, “This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide that a mental disorder is not a grievous and irremediable medical condition for which a person could receive medical assistance in dying.”

Lawson said that Canada needs to make sure that people struggling with mental illness are given the “help” they need to stay alive.

“I’m proud to stand behind Bill C-218, a private member’s bill tabled by my colleague Tamara Jansen. If passed, this bill will ensure mental illness can’t be used as justification for someone to end their life with MAID,” he said.

Lawson warned that when it comes to suicide, being a “rational thinker” can be “even more dangerous as you convince yourself that suicide is a sensible or logical course of action, but it isn’t because it’s based on an inherently flawed belief that what you’re experiencing can never get better.”

“We can’t give up on each other. The pain that mental illness causes is real and it is hard, but it isn’t permanent. Bill C-218 is about ensuring we keep hope alive for people struggling with mental illness, that we give them a right to recover. I got better and others can too,” he said.

The Conservative Party has attempted to oppose the expansion of euthanasia for some time, but recent legislative attempts to stop the expansion outright, instead of just delaying it, such as through Bill C-314, have failed.

Assisted suicide was legalized by the Liberal government of former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016.

Under the current law, assisted suicide is prohibited for minors and the mentally ill. Activists, however, have been pushing for these expansions with varying degrees of success.

In 2021, the Trudeau government expanded euthanasia from killing only “terminally ill” patients to allowing the chronically ill to qualify after the passage of Bill C-7. Since then, the government has sought to include those suffering solely from mental illness.

In February 2024 after pushback from pro-life, medical, and mental health groups as well as most of Canada’s provinces, the federal government delayed the mental illness expansion until 2027.

The expansion of euthanasia for the mentally ill is slated to become law in 2027 due to the passage of Bill C-7.

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Health

RFK Jr. urges global health authorities to remove mercury from all vaccines

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From LifeSiteNews

By Charles Richards

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is urging health leaders across the planet to stop including mercury in vaccinations.

“Now that America has removed mercury from all vaccines, I call on every global health authority to do the same — to ensure that no child, anywhere in the world, is ever exposed to this deadly neurotoxin again,” he said.

 

Kennedy’s comments came in a video he recorded for the Minamata Convention on Mercury. The event is an international gathering aimed at preventing human contact with mercury, which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is one of the top 10 chemicals of major public health concern. The treaty, backed by the United Nations (UN), was first signed in 2013 by over 140 countries.

Kennedy noted that while the group’s goal is no doubt praiseworthy, it has not gone far enough in its efforts.

“Article 4 of the convention calls on parties to cut mercury use by phasing out listed, mercury-added products. But in 2010, as the treaty took shape, negotiators made a major exception. Thimerosal-containing vaccines were carved out of the regulation,” he recalled.

“The same treaty that began to phase out mercury in lamps and cosmetics chose to leave it in products injected into babies, pregnant women, and the most vulnerable among us,” he noted. “We have to ask: Why? Why do we hold a double standard for mercury? Why call it dangerous in batteries, in over-the-counter medications, and make-up but acceptable in vaccines and dental fillings?”

This past summer, Kennedy’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices launched a study to research the vaccine schedule for children. Among other recommendations, the committee advised the removal of thimerosal, a neurotoxic, mercury-containing preservative that had been used in flu shots.

Kennedy noted in his video message that “thimerosal’s own label requires it to be treated as a hazardous material and warns against ingestion,” adding that “there is not a single study that proves it’s safe. That’s why in July of this year the United States closed the final chapter on the use of thimerosal as a vaccine preservative, something that should have happened years ago.”

“Manufacturers have confirmed that they can produce mercury-free, single dose vaccines without interrupting supply. There is no excuse for inaction or holding stubbornly to the status quo,” he exclaimed. “Now that America has removed mercury from all vaccines, I call on every global health authority and every party to this convention to do the same.”

“Let’s honor and protect humanity, and our children, and creation from mercury,” he concluded.

The Minamata Convention on Mercury went into effect in August 2017. It was initially approved by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Geneva, Switzerland, in January 2013. It was adopted in October 2013 at a Diplomatic Conference in Kumamoto, Japan. Per its website, it is named “after the bay in Japan where, in the mid-20th century, mercury-tainted industrial wastewater poisoned thousands of people, leading to severe health damage that became known as the ‘Minamata disease.’”

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Business

Bill Gates Gets Mugged By Reality

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Stephen Moore

You’ve probably heard by now the blockbuster news that Microsoft founder Bill Gates, one of the richest people to ever walk the planet, has had a change of heart on climate change.

For several decades Gates poured billions of dollars into the climate industrial complex.

Some conservatives have sniffed that Bill Gates has shifted his position on climate change because he and Microsoft have invested heavily in energy intensive data centers.

AI and robotics will triple our electric power needs over the next 15 years. And you can’t get that from windmills.

What Bill Gates has done is courageous and praiseworthy. It’s not many people of his stature that will admit that they were wrong. Al Gore certainly hasn’t. My wife says I never do.

Although I’ve only once met Bill Gates, I’ve read his latest statements on global warming. He still endorses the need for communal action (which won’t work), but he has sensibly disassociated himself from the increasingly radical and economically destructive dictates from the green movement. For that, the left has tossed him out of their tent as a “traitor.”

I wish to highlight several critical insights that should be the starting point for constructive debate that every clear-minded thinker on either side of the issue should embrace.

(1) It’s time to put human welfare at the center of our climate policies. This includes improving agriculture and health in poor countries.

(2) Countries should be encouraged to grow their economies even if that means a reliance on fossil fuels like natural gas. Economic growth is essential to human progress.

(3) Although climate change will hurt poor people, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease.

I would add to these wise declarations two inconvenient truths: First: the solution to changing temperatures and weather patterns is technological progress. A far fewer percentage of people die of severe weather events today than 50 or 100 or 1,000 years ago.

Second, energy is the master resource and to deny people reliable and affordable energy is to keep them poor and vulnerable – and this is inhumane.

If Bill Gates were to start directing even a small fraction of his foundation funds to ensuring everyone on the planet has access to electric power and safe drinking water, it would do more for humanity than all of the hundreds of billions that governments and foundations have devoted to climate programs that have failed to change the globe’s temperature.

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a former Trump senior economic advisor.

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