Today, July 10, the Montreal Gazette published an op-ed by Not Dead Yet board chair Amy Hasbrouck. This op-ed is a response to the British Columbia Supreme Court decision that created a broad ‘right’ to suicide assistance. See below for a link to this excellent essay, along with an excerpt:
How about the right to cry for help?
court ruling asserting a person’s right to assisted suicide reflects discriminatory attitudes toward the disabled
Justice Smith doesn’t appear to believe that people with disabilities and terminal illness are ever coerced, persuaded, bullied, tricked or otherwise induced to end our lives prematurely. She believes those researchers who contend there have been no problems in jurisdictions where assisted suicide is legal, and she rejects evidence suggesting there have been problems.
She writes: “It is unethical to refuse to relieve the suffering of a patient who requests and requires such relief, simply in order to protect other hypothetical patients from hypothetical harm.”
I’ll have to mention that to some of my hypothetical friends who say they have been pressured by doctors, nurses and social workers to hypothetically “pull the plug.”
The same goes for all those folks who succumbed to the pressure; I guess they’re only hypothetically dead.
Read the rest of this excellent response at the Montreal Gazette.