From Alex Schadenberg at his blog for the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition:
New Group Misrepresenting Canada’s Euthanasia Law
Excerpt:
I received a call from Stephen Drake, the research director for Not Dead Yet, a disability rights group. Drake asked me whether I knew the group Dignity in Death? I answered no. In fact when I went to the website there was no information about who they actually are, but it did tell me that they either do not understand Canadian law or that they are deliberately misrepresenting the law for their political purpose. Link to Not Dead Yet: http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/
The website states:
Dignity in Death offers information on voluntary euthanasia and the ethical issues that surround assisted suicide. In Canada, voluntary euthanasia is legal and may be used to end the lives of those who are suffering and terminally ill. However, assisted suicide is illegal.
This new group (read the blog for more info) has launched an ad campaign putting its messages on faux memorial plaques on park benches in Toronto through an ad agency. November and December seem strange months for this kind of campaign, since traffic in parks goes down, benches are often covered in snow and almost no one sits down on them. But it gets stranger – the plaques direct readers to a website:
If there is nothing wrong with euthanasia or assisted suicide, why does the Dignity in Death group need to lie about Canadian law and why does Dignity in Death not have an address or identify the leaders of the group?
It’s really really odd. What kind of group invests in advertising and yet (judging by the lack of info on the website) doesn’t really want anyone to want to know just who is running the group or how to contact them (aside from a general info email address)?
Well, for starters, maybe no one wants to be held accountable for the misinformation that is published on the website (www.deathindignity.com)) or deal with any awkward follow-up questions. –Stephen Drake
Addendum: Alex graciously gave me a cred for the heads-up on this, but the only reason I saw this news was due to an alert sent to me by my friends at the blog “Turner & Kowalski.”
For assisted suicide but against voluntary euthanasia !
About the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide, one must distinguish between the legal, ethical and religious arguments. One cannot just say without qualification that there is no difference between the two : in one case it is the patient himself who take his own life (assisted suicide), whereas in euthanasia it is the physician. One must first specify on what grounds (legal, ethical or religious) he draws is arguments. In the field of ethics, one can reasonably argue that there is no difference between the two. However, in the legal field, there is a difference between euthanasia (so-called first-degree murder with a minimum sentence of life imprisonment) and assisted suicide (which is not a murder or homicide and which the maximum sentence is 14 years of imprisonment). In the case of assisted suicide, the cause of death is the patient’s suicide and assisted suicide is somehow a form of complicity (infraction of complicity). But since the attempted suicide was decriminalized in Canada in 1972, this complicity (infraction of abetting suicide) makes no sense because this infraction should only exist if there is a main offence. But the suicide (or attempted suicide) is no longer a crime since 1972. So, logically, there cannot be any form of complicity in suicide. The offense of assisted suicide is a nonsense. Judge McLachlin said :
« In summary, the law draws a distinction between suicide and assisted suicide. The latter is criminal, the former is not. The effect of the distinction is to prevent people like Sue Rodriguez from exercising the autonomy over their bodies available to other people. The distinction, to borrow the language of the Law Reform Commission of Canada, “is difficult to justify on grounds of logic alone”: Working Paper 28, Euthanasia, Aiding Suicide and Cessation of Treatment (1982), at p. 53. In short, it is arbitrary »
In contrast, voluntary euthanasia is considered a first-degree murder. The doctor kills the patient (at his request) by compassion to relieve his pain and suffering. There’s a violation of one of the most fundamental ethical and legal principles : the prohibition to kill a human being. Our democratic societies are based on the principle that no one can remove a person’s life. The end of the social contract is “the preservation of the contractors” and the protection of life has always founded the social fabric. We’ve abolished the death penalty in 1976 in response to the « broader public concerns about the taking of life by the state » (see United States v. Burns, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 283) ! Even if voluntary euthanasia (at the request of the patient) may, under certain circumstances, be justified ethically, we cannot ipso facto concluded that euthanasia should be legalized or decriminalized. The legalization or decriminalization of such an act requires that we take into account the social consequences of the legalization or decriminalization. The undeniable potential of abuse (especially for the weak and vulnerable who are unable to express their will) and the risk of erosion of the social ethos by the recognition of this practice are factors that must be taken into account. The risk of slippery slope from voluntary euthanasia (at the request of the competent patient) to non-voluntary euthanasia (without the consent of the incompetent patient) or involuntary (without regard to or against the consent of the competent patient) are real as confirmed by the Law Reform Commission of Canada which states :
“There is, first of all, a real danger that the procedure developed to allow the death of those who are a burden to themselves may be gradually diverted from its original purpose and eventually used as well to eliminate those who are a burden to others or to society. There is also the constant danger that the subject’s consent to euthanasia may not really be a perfectly free and voluntary act ».
Eric Folot