These members are skeptical as to the validity of opinion poll results often cited by those witnesses in favour of changes to the existing laws. They are concerned with the acceptance of such poll respondents with respect to the issues polled. Moreover, they have noted the confusion as to the terms used." Majority View, Senate Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Concern over the validity of opinion poll results was given further fuel with the November CTV National Angus Reid poll. But Canadian media, for the most part, reported 76% support for euthanasia based on the poll findings.

The question asked by Angus Reid was:

"One issue that's received attention lately concerns the 'right to die' - that is, whether a person who is terminally ill and wants to die before enduring the full course of the disease, should have the right to take their own life. As a moral question, do you personally support or oppose the concept of people having the 'right to die?"

Regionally, the level of support ranged from 68% in Saskatchewan, where the Latimer case was being heard, to 84% in Quebec and 82% in British Columbia.

In contrast, a British Columbia poll commissioned by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of B.C. (EPC) found that 53.7% of respondents favoured legalization of assisted suicide. The question asked for this poll conducted by Market Explorers was:

"It is not legal to deliberately end another person's life with a pill overdose or a lethal injection. Some people consider this a way to end pain, other people consider it killing. If euthanasia is defined as deliberately ending another person's life with a pill overdose or lethal injection, do you oppose or favour legalizing it?"

As well as a lack of consensus, the poll by EPC revealed much misunderstanding about euthanasia itself. Those most in favour of legalization are the least well informed. 67% of those pro-legalization mistakenly defined the refusal of life prolonging medication or treatment as euthanasia. 56% were not aware of the legal right to refuse such medication or treatment.

However, a strong consensus exists in favour of making palliative care a right of all Canadians. In the EPC poll 81% said the government should "guarantee availability of pain relief programs and palliative care for the terminally ill as an alternative to euthanasia."

The Canadian euthanasia debate is far from over. The real views of Canadians have yet to be really heard. Furthermore, ordinary Canadians have barely begun to have access to the balanced deliberations and clear definitions found in serious studies like the Senate Committee Report. They have not been well served by a certain media tendency to traffic in sensational anecdotes about individual tragedies.

Additional results of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition poll are outlined in the enclosed blue circular. Canadian Physicians for Life contributed funds for this project.   

EPC Poll Results

 

 

By EUNICE LAI and PAUL RANALLI

"Of infants killed ye are to distinguish whether they be killed in their mothers womb or after their births; in the first case it is not adjudged murder; for that none can judge whether it be a child before it be seen."

These archaic words, written by Andrew Horne in the early 1300's in his treatise The Mirrour of Justices, were lent an unlikely resonance by a majority decision of the Supreme Court of Canada last November, which struck down the notion that a pregnant Winnipeg woman addicted to glue sniffing could be forcibly confined to care in the hope of protecting her unborn child from permanent brain damage.

Acting in the interests of the fetus, Winnipeg Child and Family Services sought, and obtained, court authority to order the woman to a treatment program to end her drug addiction for the balance of her pregnancy. The Manitoba Court of Appeal reversed this ruling, but the story has a happy ending; the young woman chose to stay in hospital until the child was born, apparently healthy, last December.

The ancient quote by Andrew Horne represents the earliest expression of the "born alive" rule, the common law authority governing the law on homicide of the unborn child; it was a conservative reflection of the state of medical ignorance at the time. So little was know about pregnancy, and pre-natal life in the womb, that an evidentiary rule was required; a child had to be observed to be born before one could deduce the presence of a new human being.

Incredibly over the last 600 years the law has changed little. Despite an explosion of medical knowledge about human life in the womb over the last three decades, the 'born alive" rule still dominates the Canadian legal definition of personhood. This ongoing reluctance of Canadian law to grasp the manifest continuity of an individual's human life before and after birth limits our justice system from creating rational, compassionate judgements regarding prenatal humans.

The birth of a baby is a special social event, yet, biologically speaking, birth is actually one of the least important events in a person's life. An infant may be "born alive" anywhere from 24 to 42 weeks after conception. The fetus can now be treated with lifesaving surgery, can be given a blood transfusion, or even genetic therapy. Brain development continues past birth, through infancy and the toddler years to a peak at the age of two. Further nerve growth and enhancement continues up to age 12, followed by refinements in neuronal connections until age 18.

What change occurs when a baby passes through the birth canal and takes her first breath? Oxygen previously delivered by the umbilical cord is now absorbed through lung tissue. Does this physiological adjustment qualify as the defining moment of personhood? Canadian law continues to cling to this notion.

In the same week as the Supreme Court ruling, a working group of the British Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommended that anaesthesia be provided to the fetus in certain late second-trimester abortions, because of the likelihood the fetus feels pain, possibly the first time abortion providers have admitted this. Usually, doctors give anaesthetics to patients.

If there is hope that one day an unborn child in this country may gain access to a measure of legal protection, it is found in the words of Justice Major who, along with Justice Sopinka, held a minority opinion that "present medical technology renders the 'born alive' rule outdated and indefensible." He cites American legal scholar Clark Forsyth's analysis that the "born alive" rule was a crude but necessary evidentiary standard set at a time of medical ignorance, and no longer deserves to be encoded as a rule of substance, particularly when the medical facts speak otherwise. "We can gauge fetal development with much more certainty than the common law presumed", Major writes. "How can the sophisticated micro-surgery that is now being performed on foetuses in utero be compatible with the 'born-alive' rule?"

Writing for the majority, Madam Justice Beverly McLachlin argued that current law could not be expanded to allow legal protection of the unborn child in this case, but she left open the door for parliament to enact such legislation. She acknowledged the difficulty: "To predict that it would have important ramifications is to state the obvious."

And yet, according to the minority judges, extending Canadian law to protect the unborn child in a circumstance such as the Winnipeg case would not in itself alter the legal status of abortion. Justice Major describes how the two may be separated: "It is not inconsistent to place restraint upon a woman's abusive behaviour towards her foetus that she has decided to carry to term yet continue to preserve her ability to choose abortion at any time in her pregnancy.

As a society, we support the intervention of children's aid agencies where ever child abuse is suspected. How big is the leap to extend this protection a few weeks before birth?

Is it perhaps time to revisit our blind application of the "born alive" rule? The American jurist Oliver Wendell Homes thought so: "It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that it was laid down in the time of Henry IV."

He wrote these words 100 years ago.

Eunice Lai is the former Executive Director of the deVeber Institute of Bioethics and Social Sciences.  Paul Ranalli is a neurologist at the University of Toronto, and vice-president of Canadian Physicians for Life.

 

Proposal B" to legalize assisted suicide in Michigan was defeated 71% To 29% on November 3, 1998.

Following the death of Burnaby resident Dr. Natverlal Thakore at the hands of Dr. Jack Kevorkian last September, Thakore's family friend and Member of Parliament Svend Robinson called on the government for a free vote on physician-assisted suicide. Canadian Physicians for Life responded with a press release stating:

"Canadian Physicians for Life finds it deplorable that any Canadian citizen would reach the point of desperation that drives them to seek a final solution in death - whether in Canada or not. Until Canada has adequate medical resources to deal properly with pain and suffering a free vote (on assisted suicide) would be premature. What is cruel and inhumane is how Canadians are allowed to suffer without adequate Palliative Care available to meet their needs. It is unconscionable that Canadians feel backed into a corner by a lack of resources so they feel they must opt for death. Surely our government can offer the more reasonable option.

Robinson's motion calling for a special committee to review Criminal Code provisions pertaining to assisted suicide was defeated 169 to 66 on March 25, 1998. In a media interview following the vote, Robinson said, "Obviously, I'm not going to give up. I'm going to continue working as hard as I can for a change in these laws that I believe are fundamentally cruel and unjust."

Dr. Patrick Pullicino, a neurologist at Buffalo General Hospital, has set up an Internet registry of physicians who do not practice assisted suicide or euthanasia. The web site also includes a questionnaire which is designed to determine to what extent physicians are being affected by requests for assisted suicide, euthanasia and withdrawal of nutrition.

While the list currently includes only American physicians, Dr. Pullicino would welcome the addition of Canadian physicians. Members of the public have free access to this registry, and physicians can have their names included by logging on to the site.

 

by Debra J. Saunders, San Fransisco Chronicle June 14, 1998

ASSISTED-SUICIDE buff Jack Kevorkian signaled his latest stunt - removing the kidneys from his last victim, ostensibly (if you live in an imaginary world where unsterile kidneys are used) for transplantation - in his 1991 book, "Prescription: Medicide."

Readers are familiar with Kevorkian as the man who has helped more than 100 people, most of them ill, kill themselves. Kevorkian's book, however, reveals his first love: a decades- long crusade for live human experimentation on death row inmates, and the harvesting of their organs. "I concluded that our death penalty laws can be so worded as to grant condemned criminals a choice between conventional methods of execution and irreversible surgical- depth anesthesia for the purpose of medical experimentation," he wrote. He later stipulated that the experiments could entail "deep probes into the most sensitive areas of the brain and central nervous system." And: The best way to understand the "mechanisms of a criminal mind" is "in the study of all parts of the intact living brain."

Some 40 years ago, The K began visiting and writing death row inmates to ask them to support his cause. No surprise, many cons didn't warm to the scheme. A few - perhaps preferring general anesthesia to the electric chair - told Kevorkian they were game, often for organ-donor duty only. Kevorkian writes that his plan differs from Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners because inmates would have a choice. Yet his early plan stipulates that the condemned "would be free to change their minds; but revocation must be limited, say to within one week."

Kevorkian dedicates his book to "those enlightened doctors in Hellenistic Alexandria and medieval Cilician Armenia. They dared to do what was right." What was right? They cut up live condemned prisoners - and in those days you could be condemned to death for being a petty criminal. Two of his Alexandrian heroes may have vivisected 600 souls. Kevorkian admits he's not sure if the 600 were anesthetized, but likes to think they were drunk.

In a romp through the history of vivisection, Kevorkian notes that 19th century U.S. researchers "sometimes used black slaves. In some respects, the experiments were similar to the concentration camp atrocities of our times ... Fortunately, most procedures involved little danger or cruelty, and outright malice on the part of experimenters was rare."

After years of failing to get his mitts on condemned prisoners, Kevorkian changed tactics. His new targets: sick and disabled folk. Kevorkian tells a cancer patient who wants The K to assist in his suicide, "I emphasized that it is not simply to help suffering or doomed persons kill themselves - that is merely the first step, an early distasteful obligation ... What I find most satisfying is the prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts under conditions that this first unpleasant step can help establish." The last third of his book deals with his vision for "obitoria" - that is, death clinics. All would be welcome - and encouraged to give away their parts and/or submit to the ever-curious "obitiatrists'" knives. For Indian women thinking of committing suttee - immolation on the pyres of their husbands - or followers of a Jonestown guru, Kevorkian proposes something more antiseptic. Not suicide prevention, mind you, but death in "an orderly clinical setting."

People wonder how Germans could elect Hitler after he spelled out his genocidal plans in "Mein Kampf."  History repeats itself.  Kevorkian has been conducting his own private holocaust - boasting more than 100 corpses - without a jury to stop him. So he's graduated to mutilation. Parts is parts.

Reprinted with permission

A recent ruling by the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal could result in silencing charitable groups that champion the right to life. In a unanimous judgement, the court upheld the decision of Revenue Canada to deregister the pro-life group Human Life International in Canada Inc.(HLIC) for engaging in "activities designed to sway public opinion on controversial social issues." The Federal Court agreed that such activities "are not charitable activities," but are political.

Writing in The Financial Post, Ottawa lawyer Arthur Drache, who was co-counsel for HLIC at the appeal, warned that "Revenue Canada now has been armed with explicit powers to go after just about any vocal charity that has the nerve to raise or discuss matters that Revenue presumably considers to be controversial social issues." It was not defined which issues are considered "controversial," but it is clear from the decision that life issues is one of them.

Canadian Physicians for Life legal adviser Iain Benson reviewed the case in Lex View*, together with lawyer Brad Miller. They write:

"It is too easy to characterize any contentious social issue as "polemical" and thereby throw it off the charitable bandwagon. That would be a mistake. Surely those who are most in need of an advocate are those whom society has overlooked or abandoned however "controversial" such advocacy is. When contrasted with the Court's decision in Native Communications Society of B.C. v. Canada (M.N.R.), (1986) 3 F.C. 471, where it rightly held that a native newspaper was a charitable enterprise because of the good it provided to the native community, the Court has made itself vulnerable to the criticism that its conclusions are driven by its sympathies with the charity's purposes, rather than the principles embodied in the common law of charitable trusts. In fact the Court in 1991 in Everywoman's Health Centre Society (1988) v. Her Majesty the Queen specifically noted that the controversial nature of a charity's activities is irrelevant to its charitable status.

'Charity and public opinion do not always go hand in hand; some forms of charity will often precede public opinion, while others will often offend it. Courts are not well equipped to assess public consensus, which is a fragile and volatile concept. The determination of the charitable character of an activity should not become a battle between pollsters. Courts are asked to decide whether there is an advantage for the public, not whether the public agrees that there is such an advantage.'

...Concern about issues such as abortion and euthanasia undoubtedly have theoretical, educational and political dimensions. And such concern does not become political because an issue is the subject of controversy... Human Life International in Canada is applying for leave to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of Canada, and we hope that the Court will take up the opportunity to clarify this important area and perhaps give guidance as to what aspects of a society's actions may be saved as charitable and 'severed' from those activities that cannot be..."

* Lex View, is an analysis of the social, public policy, human rights and moral implications of high-court decisions. To receive Lex View by fax or email, contact the Centre for Renewal in Public Policy in Ottawa at 613-567-8010 email: crpp@inasec.ca

In February 1997, the following message was printed as a full page advertisement in the Winnipeg Free Press. It was signed by over two hundred doctors listing their names and specialties. Support for this project was provided by the doctors of Manitoba Physicians for Life, the Christian Medical and Dental Society, Catholic Physicians Guild, Palliative Care doctors and others.

The 14 member organizing committee of physicians received much positive response including radio and newspaper articles as well as individual letters and personal contacts. They plan to continue working together in order to make the public and our politicians aware of the dangers that inevitably would follow the legalization of the killing of our fellow human beings. Correspondence may be directed to:

Manitoba Physicians for Life- P.O. Box 2151- Winnipeg, MB R3C 2Y4

PALLIATIVE CARE affirms life and regards dying as a normal process. The goal of Palliative Care is to help people live fully by providing relief from pain and suffering. Palliative Care neither hastens nor postpones death but seeks to enhance the quality of life of the patient and the family.

EUTHANASIA is a deliberate act undertaken by one person with the intention of ending the life of another person to relieve that person's suffering where that act is the cause of death.

We, as physicians, believe that when Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide are legalized:

• Trust in doctors is lost.
• There is a negative impact upon the regard accorded to the elderly, the physically handicapped, the mentally ill, and the infirm.
• Elderly and infirm people who consider themselves to be a burden may feel obligated to be put to death.
• People fear and avoid the medical care they may need.
• What starts as a restricted practice leads to use in cases where it was not intended.
• There is often lack of full consent even by the competent patient.
• It is not necessarily restricted to the terminally ill.
• Physicians feel obligated to participate in Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.
• Research into cure for diseases may be neglected.
• There is less emphasis upon palliative care and proper pain control.

Many concerns have been raised in the Netherlands where Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide have become accepted practices and where numerous serious abuses have been reported.

WE CALL UPON our parliamentarians, legal experts, doctors, nursing colleagues and the public at large to recognize the fundamental difference between the avoidance of undue and unnecessary treatment of the terminally ill patient and the act of killing.

The Financial Post - June 11, 1998 By MICHAEL COREN

I have held off writing about the closure of Toronto's Wellesley Hospital and about its work being taken over by nearby St. Michael's until now, but I can no longer sit back and say nothing. It is, of course, a dark day when any hospital is closed, and I do not believe the Wellesley should have been thus treated. But this, apparently, is no longer the point. The fuss now is St. Michael's Hospital dares to be a Roman Catholic institution and consequently believes in the sanctity of human life from conception until natural death. In short, abortion and surgical contraception will no longer be offered.

Few people have actually complained about this but those who have seem to have an unusually easy and generous access to the media. Their voices tend to be heard. Which is surprising, in that all the new hospital policy will mean is that those women who want to abort their unborn babies will have to drive another half a mile for this publicly funded procedure. As for vasectomies, they are virtually available at the corner store.

The truth is Toronto has an abundance of abortion clinics and the Ontario government, despite many gestures to the pro-life movement while in opposition, has done nothing to curtail abortion since coming to government. Much as I wish the St. Michael's policy would drastically reduce the number of abortions, in reality it will save only a few tiny lives.

Yet the venom of some opponents of St. Michael's is extraordinary. In their passion for pluralism they demand the Catholic Church abandon its most fundamental beliefs. In the name of tolerance, they seem to be saying, we refuse to tolerate your religion. Interestingly enough, as unborn life is also sacred to evangelical Christians, orthodox Jews and practising Muslims, this paradoxical interpretation of pluralism might be in for a rough ride in the years to come.

The irony here is the reason hospitals like the Wellesley are being closed in the first place is so cuts can be made to the health care budget. One large unnecessary cost to that budget is financing the elective surgery of abortion. Surely even those who support abortion must accept there is no moral or logical argument for the government to be firing nurses so it can continue to fund violent birth control.

It is also the case that a hospital that refuses to perform abortions would be a more inviting place for the millions of Canadians who are vehemently opposed to the phenomenon. Surely they are entitled to a hospital in Greater Toronto that is less repugnant in their eyes. Irritating though it might be to some people, pro-lifers have rights too.

The church was providing universal and free health care before the modern secular state even existed and without such a system socialized medicine could not have triumphed. As for the marginalized of society, leper hospitals were and often still are staffed by nuns and priests and Christian doctors and nurses of all denominations were working in the developing world long before the United Nations. Christian health care in North America has a sparkling record and a belief system that features at the top of its list a commitment to treating people of any and every faith. Such is the anger toward this church and its hospitals, however, that in New York some politicians are threatening to impose abortion by force on the city's many Catholic institutions. The church has replied it will close its hospitals before allowing such a thing. If this happened the entire health system of one of the world's largest and busiest cities would come to a standstill.

Why, then, the extremism from the pro-abortion movement and why the lack of respect for the views of others? Because this isn't about the Wellesley or St. Michael's or any other single hospital but about a new authoritarianism that refuses to accept dissident and different views. Anyone who genuinely believed in choice would be applauding the courage of St. Michael's Hospital, but then this isn't really about choice at all. That has been obvious for a long time.

Michael Coren is an author and broadcaster. Used with permission.

A survey of Canada's doctors discloses that 48 percent of them believe that if terminally ill patients received better pain control, there would be no demand for assisted suicide. The survey by pollsters Angus Reid for The Medical Post involved telephone interviews with 508 physicians across the country. it found that 55 percent of doctors do not believe their colleagues are doing enough to ease the suffering of the dying.

Concluded survey editor Diana Swift, "If you're going to be anti-euthanasia, you've got to be pro-pain relief." The survey also found that for a majority of doctors, "religion is an important part of their daily life [with] 69 percent praying on occasions outside of formal [worship] services. One in 10 read Scripture daily, while only one in 100 is an outright atheist versus one in 25 in the general population." (Family Issues Alert - Volume 4, Number 48)

The Dutch/Canadian newspaper "De Krant" reports that an inquiry by the Erasmus University and the Free University of Amsterdam has found that in 1995 doctors hastened the death of 9,600 patients by removal of food and water. These deaths occurred primarily in care homes, where one quarter of all deaths occurred due to non-administration of nutrition and hydration. The inquiry also found that in some cases this was not discussed with mentally competent patients or with family members.

After results of the study were made public, the Netherlands Association for Care Homes, which represents care homes for chronically ill and demented elderly patients, announced plans to better inform the public about assisted dying. (DE KRANT - November 1997)

by: Herbert Hendin, MD    published by W. W. Norton & Company

Founder and Executive Director of the American Suicide Foundation, Dr. Herbert Hendin examines the Dutch experience by visiting the Netherlands, studying court cases, interviewing  Dutch physicians, and analyzing the historical and cultural factors that led to the country's acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicides.

Dr. Hendin explores the ramifications of legalizing euthanasia for patients, their families, and medical practitioners. He concludes that the Dutch experience has given more power to physicians, not patients.

"Herbert Hendin has produced a remarkable document about the experience of the Netherlands. If you have not read it, you owe it to yourself to do so." - Dr. C. Everett Koo